Going with the Living
by KADH
Summary: Beginning a new life together after a long separation is indeed a wondrous thing, but Sara and Grissom soon discover it is not without its problems, pitfalls and perils, particularly if the undertaking occurs in the middle of the Costa Rican rainforest.
1. One: Dr Grissom, I Presume

**Going with the Living**

Beginning a new life together after a long and difficult separation is indeed a wondrous thing, but Sara and Grissom soon discover it is not without its problems, pitfalls and perils, particularly if the undertaking occurs in the middle of the Costa Rican rainforest.

_Takes place immediately following "Postscript" and "An Ordinary Day," post episode 910 "One to Go," circa December 2008._

********

A/N: A WIP. Not to be confused with a previously released story by the same name.

_For Frank - Occasional muse, frequent instigator and fairly all around pita -- a story about the pleasures and pitfalls of beginning again, for the one person who never lets me forget that having to start over isn't always a bad thing. _

_I can think of no one else I'd rather share the journey with than you._

_*******_

**One: Dr. Grissom, I Presume**

"Sara, have you seen what Ana --" came the unexpected query from behind the two of them.

Sara started slightly. She reluctantly disengaged herself from Grissom's embrace and hurriedly attempted to wipe the tears from her face with the back of her hand as she turned. She was about to offer introductions, explanations, something -- anything, but the interloper, who did not appear the least bit surprised or fazed to see Grissom standing there with her, beat her to it.

"Dr. Grissom, I presume," he said, striding towards them. "Stephen. Stephen Baird." Stephen extended a hand, regarding Grissom with what Sara knew to be his usual, if somewhat jocular familiarity, as if nothing at all was amiss or unusual, as if unannounced visitors popping out of the rainforest were to be expected. Which was about when Sara realized that was exactly what had happened. Stephen's next words of "Ana said we should be expecting you today," confirmed as much.

Well, she thought with a wry sort of smile, that explained why Ana had been suddenly so adamant in insisting that Sara stay behind that day to help Stephen, and why Stephen, whom she had never seen regard his wristwatch as anything but just something he wore out of habit rather than necessity, had repeatedly checked it the entire time when they had been out in the field earlier.

She was only half-heartedly listening as Stephen was saying, "She's sorry she couldn't be here to meet you in person but she had to go to town today," for Sara was far more occupied watching Grissom silently appraise Stephen with that same sort of penetrating gaze she had frequently seen him use when he met people for the first time. There wasn't anything dubious or suspicious about it as the act was merely the result of more than twenty years of habit.

She wondered what Grissom made of him.

But Grissom for his part was at the moment listening to Stephen with the same focused intent he had acquired from the time when he was losing his hearing and had to read lips in order to keep up with conversations.

"With the holiday coming up, we've been having some issues with our usual suppliers in town that sadly only she can take care of." Stephen leaned in almost conspiratorially before adding, "She knows better swear words in Spanish than I do. Seems to work. Anyway," he turned to Sara, "Why don't you take Dr. Grissom to get settled in before everyone else gets back. I'll put up the camera and the rest of the specimens you were working on."

After being struck virtually dumb for the last five minutes, Sara finally found her voice. "Did Ana want to put him with Bernie and Luis?" she asked with a businesslike nonchalance she didn't really feel.

Stephen chuckled. "Those two suit each other just fine, but I wouldn't inflict that punishment on anyone else. Dr. Cole's old tent is empty. Might as well get some use out of it." He paused in the act of turning to go. "I'll... uh, ask Luis and Bernie to move your things over as well once they get back, Sara," he said with a casualness she knew better than to believe. But his next words left her looking aghast: "Bridget's been complaining about your snoring keeping her up all night."

The glance that Grissom was suddenly giving her was more than a little amused. His grin bore all the smug satisfaction of the vindicated. She shook her head dismissively to indicate that Stephen's words proved nothing, absolutely nothing at all.

Stephen gave Grissom's hand one last welcoming shake saying, "It's a real pleasure to finally meet you, Dr. Grissom. You know Sara's told us a lot about you," before disappearing as quickly as he had appeared.

It was Grissom's turn to give Sara a curious look. To which she made no immediate reply. Instead, she waited to make sure Stephen was well out of earshot to ask, "Does this mean_ I_ have to go back to calling you _Dr. Grissom_ again?"

The attempt at a tease felt good -- familiar and seemed to dispel a little of the tension she was feeling at the strangeness of Grissom's unexpected arrival. And Grissom seemed to appreciate it. Or at least he took it with his customary good grace.

"Please, no," he sighed. "I hated being called that eleven years ago."

Sara smiled at this.

And then they were alone again, just the two of them, and for a few long moments they just stood there simply staring at each other as if a sudden sense of shyness had settled over them. It wasn't awkward exactly, but the shock and surprise really hadn't had a chance to wear off just yet, at least not for Sara.

She thought that Stephen's untimely interruption would have made Grissom's presence all the more real, but it still felt unreal for Grissom to really be there.

The last handful of minutes seemed more like a dream than anything. And yet Sara could still feel her lips and cheek and palm tingle slightly from where he had so recently kissed her.

It had been so overwhelming, those first few moments, with the flood of a half dozen different feelings surging all at once: a breathless sort of joy, the desire for connection and confirmation, the wondering and longing and having all at once.

Neither of them had much seemed to know what to say then. Although there had been so much Grissom had wanted to say, he could not seem to heave his heart into his mouth and all sense of reason or rationality had left him. So he had simply held her, relishing the warmth of her, the familiar scent of her slightly tinged with that of sweat and a strange sort of earthiness, tasting the tart saltiness of her tears from when his lips brushed against her cheeks.

Sara hadn't faired much better. The still damp eyes that had peered up into his when she finally pulled away retained the trace of disbelief and her fingers had lingered at the base of his neck as if she needed that very tangible proof that he was indeed really real.

It may have been minutes or merely moments then. But it seemed that the instant both of them had finally chosen to say something was when the sound of Stephen calling for Sara had interrupted them.

Truthfully, she had been more than a little taken aback at Grissom's reaction. While his palm had slid from her neck and down her spine before coming to rest at the small of her back when she had turned to acknowledge Stephen, Grissom did not look the least bit startled or chagrined at the intrusion, nor did he bother to remove his hand except to take Stephen's.

It still rested there, his hand, at the base of her spine.

"Why - why um, why don't we..." Sara began to stammer as he reached up to brush the wetness that she had missed from her cheeks. "Get you... uh settled in."

He smiled his consent and went to retrieve his pack from where he had so hastily discarded it earlier. When he turned back to face her, she was holding out his hat for him. He took it and was happy to find that she continued to extend her hand as if waiting and wanting for him to take it, too.

The warmth in her fingers, the way her palm pressed against his, felt wonderfully familiar.

She tugged him forward.

After a moment, she said, "Do I even want to know how you managed to get here?"

"Airplane. Bus. On foot," he succinctly replied.

"You know what I mean."

Grissom thought about it. Tendering his resignation. Telling the team. Feeling like that last case would just never end. The hurried packing. The unsaid good-byes. Then the long evening flight from Vegas to San Jose. His ignoring Dr. Velasquez's suggestion to spend a night in a hotel when he first arrived because he had been so intent on seeing Sara. The seemingly even longer bus ride out that followed. The two hour walk through the heat and humidity of the forest. At least, he hadn't had to travel by boat, he ultimately mused.

But it had been worth it -- all of it worth it, just to see her smile.

He finally settled on a bemused sort of "Let's just say you weren't all that hard to find, dear," before adding, "And Dr. Velazquez was very helpful in arranging things."

Sara pursed her lips, shook her head at this and muttered, "And keeping it quiet," almost under her breath.

"Besides," he added. "You know what they say --"

"No, what?"

"_Desperate times call for desperate measures_."

"I have never known you to be desperate," she countered.

He had been and wanted to tell her as much.

But they had stopped in front of a large canvas tent. Sara was in the process of working free the knots securing the ties. She tied a flap back and proceeded to step inside.

Grissom did not immediately follow her. He stood there, pack slung over one shoulder and hat in hand, looking, when Sara turned back to him, if she had to name the expression, shy. She examined his expression curiously. For a man she had never seen so nervous, not once in all the years, he was wearing _that_ look for the second time that day. She re-crossed the narrow space between them and reached up to finger the line where his hat had cut into his hair.

"Gil," she barely breathed.

"I wanted to write," he confessed softly. "Honey, but I..."

Her hand slid to his cheek and her thumb began tracing its familiar way along the skin just above his beard as she said, "I've also never known you to be at a loss for words."

The truth was, Grissom rued, he had often been struck that way around her over the years and far too often when he needed those words the most.

"This time borrowed ones wouldn't do," he replied.

Sara nodded knowingly. Then said, "Are you hungry? Dinner's not for a couple of hours yet. And before you ask, it's not my night to cook, so consider yourself fortunate."

The self-deprecating remarked netted her a soft smile from him. "I'm fine," Grissom maintained.

"Feel like you swallowed a whole rabble of butterflies?" she asked and to his "Yeah," she admitted, "I know that feeling." Then added almost in the same breath, "You have to be tired."

"I'm okay," he insisted and while she doubted it, she knew better than to and had no intention of arguing with him.

"How about a shower? I know you're hot, because you never --"

"And I thought _I _was nervous," Grissom interjected before she could continue.

Which was when Sara realized that her solicitude had quickly degenerated into almost anxious babbling. It had been a long time since her nerves had made her over-talk around him, but this was all so new and strange and frankly unbelievable.

"Well, you've had a bit more time to get used to it all," she replied.

"Does that mean you gave up on the idea that --"

"I'd ever see you again?" Sara finished with an emphatic shake of the head. "No."

Still a little leery that he might misconstrue her words to mean that she wasn't pleased to see him, she gave him a bright smile and said both earnest - and honestly:

"I'm glad you're here."


	2. Two: Breaking the Good News

**Two: Breaking the (Good) News**

There was just something about a shower after a long journey. It had the tendency to make a person feel just a bit more human again -- or at least clean, which Grissom thought was something anyway.

He returned from showering to find Sara in the midst of making up the cots in the tent. In his absence, she had pushed the two of them together to make what appeared to be a fairly convincing imitation of a full sized bed.

He paused, abruptly wonderstruck at the sight of her. It wasn't that he hadn't seen her make up a bed dozens of times before, for he had. And yet, it felt different somehow.

There was the flash of whiteness, the whoosh of air as she shook the top sheet open, the flutter of fabric as it descended onto the mattress, the sureness with which her hands smoothed the cloth free of wrinkles and firmly tucked in the corners.

As she moved to finish up the opposite side, she noticed him standing there, now freshly showered and changed, his hair still damp and his dirty clothes over one arm.

Their eyes met and she smiled. Both the time and the attendant tasks that had kept her busy while he had been gone, had done much to settle her nerves. Grissom returned the grin with an equal amount of affection, draped his clothes on an empty chair and proceeded to help her finish making the bed.

"Feel better?" she asked.

"Much."

"One of the side effects of traveling no one ever tells you about," she sighed and motioned for him to have a seat on the cot. "Makes you appreciate a shower and clean clothes almost as much as a decomp does."

As he sat he gestured to their surroundings and said, "I guess this means they don't have issues with fraternization."

Sara shrugged. "It would be rather hypocritical if they did."

"Why is that?"

"You didn't know?" she queried in reply but he only continued to look clueless. "Stephen is Ana's - Dr. Velazquez's - husband. Traditionally Tico women don't take their husbands' names when they marry."

Grissom nodded in comprehension. Sara's grin turned impish. "You mean there is actually something Gil Grissom doesn't know?"

The decision on Grissom's part not to even dignify the question with a response, only made Sara's smile widen.

She was still chuckling to herself as she reached over to the small table at the head of the bed to remove a saucer from where it rested on top of a mug.

"To keep out the bugs," she explained as she handed him the steaming cup.

He eyed it curiously for a moment before giving it a wary sniff. It wasn't as if he was squeamish or really worried about anything Sara might give him, but he thought it didn't hurt to be a little careful especially on his first day in a country whose customs and cuisine were mostly foreign to him.

When it appeared that he had completed his cursory examination and still hadn't risked tasting any, Sara decided to clue him in. "It's _agua dolce_," she explained. "Milk mixed with pure cane sugar."

"The Costa Rican equivalent of a glass of warm milk?"

"More like hot chocolate without the chocolate," she replied. "I've never tried it for insomnia, but it is good for a hot day."

"Oh?" he asked, trying to work out how something hot helped with the heat as he typically stuck to cold beverages after any prolonged exposure to the Vegas heat.

"I know it sounds counterintuitive," admitted Sara. "But while it doesn't work to directly cool you off, it re-hydrates the body without providing to much shock to the system. In theory."

"In practice?"

"Seems to work. Besides," she said, the lilt of a tease in her tone, "I thought _you_ liked warm milk."

"My mother used to give it to me," Grissom countered. "I never said I liked it."

She gave him a wry shake of the head. "Could have fooled me with all the times you tried to foist the stuff on me."

Grissom took a small, skeptical sip of the beverage. Then another.

"Not bad?" she asked. He nodded and was content to sit there and enjoy the drink as he watched Sara resume her puttering about the tent. He did however give her an inquisitive tilt of the head when she placed an extra blanket at the end of what had always been his side of the bed.

"It can get a little chilly after dark," she supplied matter-of-factly and then with a great deal more fondness, "You tend to get cold."

Grissom's mouth half-twitched into what might have turned into a smile, but conflicting emotions kept it from sticking or ever quite reaching his eyes. The warmth in knowing that she had remembered was at odds with the regret he was feeling over all the time they had lost and could never have back because of his own foolish stupidity.

"My mother was right," he began softly. "When it came to you, I always was a

_moron and a coward and a fool._"

Sara took a seat beside him. "I've never thought so," she said.

"Never?" He both sounded and looked incredulous.

"Well," she shrugged, "perhaps once or twice."

Grissom couldn't begin to express how sorry he was. But Heather had been right, too. Apologies were _just words_ and all the _I'm sorrys_ he could ever say could not undo what he had and had not done.

Sara seemed to sense his regret. She gave his hand a slight squeeze as she told him, "But you're here now."

Yes, there was that, he had to agree.

She nudged his pack with a toe. "You -- uh -- packed light," she observed warily. "Not planning on staying very long?"

"Hardly," he replied and in that knowing way she knew and loved so well said. "Sometimes it's good for the soul to possess nothing more than what you can carry on your back."

At the _oh really?_ look she was giving him, Grissom added, "That and Dr. Velazquez suggested I have my things sent from the airport instead of attempting to lug them here on my own."

They shared a smile at that.

Finally, Sara seemed to find the words for the question she had been wanting to ask all along: "How long can you stay?"

But Grissom could also hear the other questions, the ones that remained as yet unspoken: _When do you have to be back? When do you have to leave to return to Vegas?_

"As long as you'll have me," he replied simply.

To which Sara gave an almost nervous laugh. "Even _you_ don't have that much vacation time banked."

"I didn't take vacation time to come."

It was her turn to suddenly look apprehensive "You took another leave of absence?"

"No."

Sara's eyes went wide in realization.

"You... You didn't."

He nodded.

"You..."

"Left CSI?" he finished. "Yes."

"For good?"

He gave her another nod. "I handed in my resignation a little over two weeks ago."

"But..." Sara said, seemingly unable to come up with any other, let alone any more profound response.

Grissom slid his fingers between hers.

"But your work -- your life --" she continued to stammer in disbelief.

"They aren't always the same thing. And sometimes they shouldn't be."

"But your work has always meant everything --"

"Not anymore. Not anymore," he insisted. "There are more important things. Much more important things. _You. Us_."

"But your life," she protested.

"Recently a friend reminded me not so gently, that my job wasn't my life. It was part of it, yes, but not my whole life. And it was time that I stopped trying to hide behind my work so I didn't have to actually live my life."

"But the lab -- the team --"

"I'm not _that_ irreplaceable, Sara," Grissom maintained. "They will no doubt do just fine without me."

She mouthed wordlessly for a few moments, unable to wrap her mind around the fact that Grissom could be so calm and collected about it all.

After a while, she said, "You know... you know that wasn't what I was asking..."

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"I know."

"I - I just wanted to get you away for a little while. Before..."

"I know," he said again. "Honey, I had to come," he whispered. "I had to. I wasn't ready to say good-bye."

Sara's lips twitched slightly in recognition of the reference, but the smile turned to something else when he said, "And I finally figured out what to do about it."

She waited for him to continue, to explain, but instead he pulled her towards him and kissed her -- gently, lovingly, longingly.

While Sara thought that it would probably surprise a great many of the people whom they knew that Gil Grissom was, or at least could be, a passionate man, it was always the tenderness that tempered that passion that left her awestruck and breathless.

Just as it did now.

"I couldn't do it without you," he murmured, caressing her cheek. "And I don't want to." He nudged her chin until her eyes met his again. For a while, he just looked at her. Then after a deep breath, he said, "Sara, you taught me that the hardest thing anyone can ever do is to love another person."

She nodded at the truth of this.

"These past months, this past year," he continued, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. "I've learned that the second hardest thing is having to learn to live without that person."

"So I made a decision. _Finally_," he said with a sad sort of smile. "Honey, I didn't come to bring you back. I came to be with you. Here. San Francisco. Wherever. Where doesn't matter. Not to me. Not anymore."

"Gil --" she began, but he kissed her quiet again.

"Sara, I need you."

She gaped at him open mouthed.

_I need you. _In some ways, those three words were more meaningful than all the _I love yous_ in the world.

Sara closed her eyes, tried to breathe.

She knew that this time Grissom was the one who was offering her -- and them -- a second chance at a life together. She knew, too, that it was an opportunity tendered freely, without hesitation, reservation or expectation. All she had to do was take it.

So she did.


	3. Three: On the Meaning Behind Mementos

**Three: On the Meaning Behind Mementos**

"What do you have in that thing? A dead body?" Grissom asked as the two young men struggled to lug in Sara's footlocker.

"Funny," she replied with a humorless laugh. "Very funny. Besides weren't _you_ the one who said that a person could never have too many books?"

It looked as if Luis and Bernie might have been more than willing to challenge the veracity of that statement -- if they had stuck around long enough. But they vanished even before Sara could attempt to make introductions. Grissom reasoned that they were probably afraid that she might find something else for them to move.

"By the way," she said, flipping the lid open. "There is no way a bunch of almost complete strangers get to call you _Gil _when I had to wait seven years for that privilege."

"Yes, dear," came Grissom's dutiful reply, focused as he was at peering over her shoulder.

Her trunk was just as neat as he expected it to be. It consisted of two compartments: the smaller one for clothes, while the larger held everything else, which in her case, appeared to consist mostly of books. A small jar of desiccant was jammed into one corner in order to take care of the ever-present damp that seemed to cling to everything.

"We do a lot of reading around here," Sara supplied as he began to run his fingers along the spines of the mostly ragged paperbacks which had obviously seen better days.

"Like that is anything new," he quipped and tired of squinting at the titles, pulled out his reading glasses and settled them on the end of his nose -- an act that always made it difficult for Sara not to smile at the sight.

" Beggars can't be choosers?" he queried after a few minutes.

"It's not _that _bad," Sara countered evenly. "And if I remember correctly, you did once also tell me that I should read something other than crime books. Besides, I thought you were a fan of the classics."

Grissom made no reply to this. He was far too busy studying one of the few hardcovers in her collection. It looked even more aged than the rest, but in slightly better condition; and while the title embossed in gilt letters was unfamiliar, the author was not. He gently wiggled the volume free.

Sara hadn't realized what he was doing until it was too late and an envelope had already fluttered free from the pages. While she hurriedly bent to pick it up, Grissom was faster.

"Gil --" she began, not quite sure how to even begin to explain as he turned the envelope over to reveal her name and the partial address scribbled in his own handwriting on the reverse.

"Melville?" he questioned after a moment.

It wasn't the query she was expecting, but she answered it anyway. "It's not Shakespeare, but it made me think of you."

His lips twitched slightly at this.

"I wasn't snooping," Sara suddenly insisted. "I swear. I mean _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ is a pretty obvious place for you."

He didn't say anything for a while, intent as he was on examining the letter. It was more worn than he remembered; the back flap more loose, as if it had been frequently opened and then shut again.

"Are you upset?" she asked, not quite sure how to read either his quiet or his expression.

His soft "No" wasn't very illuminating, but when he handed the letter back to her, there was something more in his "It was always yours," something beyond just tenderness.

Which was when Sara finally understood. Understood why he had so uncharacteristically left the book on her side of the bed. Why the envelope had more than peeked out of the pages.

"You meant for me to find it," she said, her voice slightly breathless at the realization.

Grissom for his part only grinned in that enigmatic way of his that she knew all too well -- the one that would neither expressly confirm or deny and yet spoke volumes.

Sara shook her head and sighed. Running her thumb over the letter she said, "It's beautiful. Why didn't you send it?"

He seemed to be considering his response before saying, "Do you remember the inscription?"

"In the Shakespeare book?" Sara nodded.

"While I took your advice, it didn't feel right. Sending it, I mean. I meant it. The letter. Meant all of it. But I - I guess I wished the words hadn't had to be borrowed. That they had been mine -- just mine alone.

"At the same time, I realized that it wouldn't be all that long before I would see you again and figured that perhaps some things were just better said in person.

"Then things were different when I got back. Different in a good way," he hurriedly qualified. "And there was so much I wanted to tell you. Only I never seemed to find the time or place. Or the courage."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "Sara, I wish I knew why I always seem to have such a hard time expressing my feelings to you. I didn't know then. I still don't. And there is still so much I want to tell you."

"You're forgetting something," Sara said softly. He waited patiently for her to go on. "The first part of that inscription -- '_When words are scarce_ --'"

"'_They are seldom spent in vain_,'" he finished with a knowing half-smile and a nod.

He gently eased open the cover of _The Encantadas _so Sara could replace the letter, only to find the space already occupied.

"I wondered where that got to," he said, extracting the single photograph. The last time he remembered seeing it was on his fridge, but that had been months ago now - just before she had left. He should have realized what had become of it.

Grissom had always been fond of that particular photo. It was of just the two of them, taken not long after they had first met at the Forensic Academy Conference more than a decade ago. While he still had a hard time imagining he had ever looked that young, Sara, Sara had been so vibrant, so radiant then.

But so much had changed since, for better and for worse.

He supposed they were both a little like that photograph with its dog-eared corners and frayed edges. Some of the luster had faded with time, the colors almost yellowed. And the picture bore, too, the creases of a snapshot much handled with fondness.

"That I will confess to taking," Sara admitted with a measure of contrition. "I meant to make a copy and return it. I know it was selfish of me to just take it with out asking or telling you. But I guess I wanted something..."

"Happy?" Grissom supplied.

Sara nodded.

And something that still spoke of possibilities, she thought. Of the sort of possibilities not tempered by time and life and all its attendant chaos. Yes, she had wanted to hold onto that - to a bit of hope - and not just be left with that horribly hollow feeling her leaving had left her with.

"Yes," she admitted. "Something happy to hold onto."

He reached over and covered her hand with his. She peered down at them for a moment before saying, "I had forgotten all about that photo until I saw it on your fridge. You know I would never have pegged you for a sentimentalist, Gil."

"It was the smile," he said simply.

"What was?"

"The reason I kept it. Why it was on the fridge. Your smile. I missed it."

At this, Sara couldn't help but smile in reply.

"What I don't remember," she began, "is how on earth we ended up in Golden Gate Park in the first place."

"Well, there were all those questions of yours," Grissom replied, a hint of a tease in his voice. When her expression intimated that he was being incorrigible, he added with a touch more seriousness, "I think we just started talking and walking and I just followed you lead as I assumed you knew where we were going since you were the one who lived here at the time."

"Goes to show what the illustrious Dr. Gil Grissom really knew," Sara chuckled. "I never saw much more than the inside of the lab in those days."

"And that changed how when you came to Vegas?" he asked.

She shot him a dirty look, which he promptly chose to ignore. So instead she asked him, "Why did you have your camera with you that day anyway? You've never struck me as the kind of person who likes to shoot a lot of cheesy _this is where I went on my trip_ sort of photos."

"It was strictly for business," he replied. "Director Covallo wanted me to get some shots at the conference while I was there and I just happened to have it with me when I was with you."

"It made you look like a tourist."

"You didn't seem to have any problems with tourists," Grissom countered. "That young Japanese couple was really appreciative when you offered to stop and take their picture for them."

Sara nodded. "So appreciative they insisted that they do the same for us."

"Yeah."

"And the guy kept saying, 'Closer, closer.'"

"I think he thought we were --" Grissom's voice trailed off slightly.

"Probably," she agreed. "You did put your hand on my shoulder for the picture though."

"You didn't seem to mind."

"Neither did you."

"No."

"And you kept the photo."

Grissom nodded. "While risking playing into a stereotype, Japanese tourists do know how to take good pictures."

Sara laughed. "But that wasn't why you kept it."

"Like I said, it was the smile."

He was about to return the picture to the book, when Sara motioned that he should take it back.

"Keep it," he insisted. "I don't need it anymore.

"I have you."

To which she grinned.

"See?" he said as if she had just proven his point.

Sara only beamed all the more before she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn't a particularly long or heady sort of kiss. Instead it was rather light, gentle, almost breathy, but it was the first kiss she had initiated since he had arrived. It was that fact which gave it a sweetness and a pleasure all of its own.

When they pulled away, Grissom said, still smiling, "Perhaps I should think about getting a lock for my trunk." When Sara pursed her lips, he added with a laugh, "As you do seem to have made a habit of appropriating things."

However, the truth was that he was pleased, pleased that she had kept his letter, that she valued the photograph enough to take it. What he didn't know was the extent to which she really had treasured them. For treasured them she had, just as she had cherished the thought and hope of someday seeing him again.

She wanted to tell him this. But perhaps there were some times when words were overrated. So instead she gave his hand one last squeeze and told him that she had something for him, before she began to rummage beneath a stack of neatly folded shirts until she withdrew a battered tea tin that like her books, had also obviously seen better days.

"We aren't allowed to keep anything we find out in the field as it all has to be processed and catalogued," she explained. "But anything that stumbles into camp is fair game. I know you prefer butterflies, but I thought these might interest you."

Grissom's eyes went wide as she opened the tin. Expertly pinned inside was a neat row of beetles each more spectacular than the last. Their colors seemed too vibrant, too brilliant to be real. The first one, barely as long as his thumb was wide was a glistening green, punctuated by watermelon-like stripes and a sunburst of red and black in the center. Beside it rested one even smaller. Its lacquered reddish brown hues had a wood-grained pattern to them. A beetle twice the size of either of the previous ones was a single shade of ruddy crimson while the fourth and final specimen was not only notable for its size, but for the shiny iridescence of its carapace whose brilliant emerald gradually gave way to bands of rainbow hues.

The collection was nothing short of breathtaking.

Sara was elated to see the wonder settle over Grissom's features, glad to see that he was having a hard time containing his delight and also finding the words to express it. He gaped at her opened mouthed several times before he slowly closed the lid.

Once he was finally able to find his voice again, he said, "You do know that you can't export specimens through the mail without a license?"

"Yeah."

And in that moment he understood. Understood that he had not been the only one entertaining hopes of them seeing each other again.

There was nothing restrained about the kiss he gave her in reply.


	4. Four: Nightlife

**Four: Nightlife**

Unlike the gradual, almost imperceptible way the day faded from light into dark when night fell in Vegas, in the Costa Rican rainforest night _crashed_ -- abrupt and utterly. And in the interval before the stars began to blink on in earnest and the moon rose to cast everything in its silvery glow, that night was thick with all the impenetrable darkness of Indian ink.

Grissom had forgotten just how dark it could be after all the years he had lived beneath the harsh glaring neon lights. It was a startling and yet welcome change.

However, the darkness did not bring silence with it. The forest was full of night noises – hum, buzz and chirrup, the whisper of insect wings and the creeping of critters that did not emerge until night. Nor was the camp itself precisely quiet. Quite the reverse in fact. The place bustled with activity. But there was an underlying sense of order to all the chaos; a measure of routine that Grissom was still in the process of working out, but was certain was there.

Introductions had been hurriedly and perfunctorily made in the midst of supplies being put away and the dinner preparations begun. Although Ana had stopped long enough to shake hands and lean in to tell Grissom that she knew he _had to be special from the way Sara's face lit up every time she spoke of him_. Sara had merely shrugged at this and hurried him off to go help set the table.

Grissom measured out the plates, "Ana, Stephen, Bridget, Luis, Bernie, you and I..." He turned to Sara and asked, "Am I missing anyone?"

She counted the people out. "Six - no seven - that's right. I'm still getting used to there being another person," she replied with a slight smile. "By the way, don't let Luis and Bernie fool you with all of their apologies about how bad their English is," Sara added. "Their English is just fine and certainly a lot better than my Spanish.

"I am still trying to figure out exactly how to get them back for a trick they played on me the first week I got here. I made the mistake of asking them how to ask for baby oil in one of the shops. Let's just say I got a lot of snickers until a friendly Tico politely informed me I was asking for something else entirely."

Grissom grinned at this, felt half-amused half-sorry for the two young men. For he knew all too well the dangers of pissing Sara off.

"Baby oil?" he queried after a moment.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Gil. You mix it with a dettol to make insect repellent," she explained. "It's an old bushman recipe Bridget picked up that actually works, believe it or not, and is a lot more environmentally friendly and better for your skin than DEET."

"I see," he said, but didn't sound entirely convinced.

Sara shook her head and over the clink of the enamelware plates and mugs upon the tabletop told him to "Just remember that forensics really isn't polite dinner conversation for most of the rest of the world."

"So no dead bodies at the dinner table?"

"Right."

"Fine with me," he readily concurred. Murder and mayhem were the last things he wanted to talk about these days. "What about bugs?" he asked.

Sara paused in the act of laying out the cutlery to consider it. She settled on, "Fine within reason."

"Within reason?" he echoed.

"Nothing gross. Gross by _normal_ people's standards," she hurriedly amended, remembering exactly whom she was talking to and the fact that Grissom's gross- out threshold exceeded pretty much everyone's on the planet apart from a few nine year old boys. "And just in case you're tempted," she warned. "Remember that I know just as many embarrassing stories about you as you do about me."

That did give him a moment's pause.

"Which reminds me," he finally said. "What exactly did you tell them?"

"About you?" Sara asked. "Nothing too mortifying."

Considering the grin she was currently wearing, he wasn't entirely reassured.

********

It wasn't long before Grissom realized that Sara hadn't been joking when she had told him that she hoped he liked beans and rice. _Gallo pinto_ featured heavily at dinner along with platters of _patacones_ - fried plantains - and fresh homemade tortillas. It was simple food, but hearty and delicious.

Although Grissom noticed that midway through the meal, much of it remained on Sara's plate and she hadn't taken much to eat to begin with. She had been quiet, too, more quiet than he would have thought her to be. But no one else seemed to notice.

Over the cover of Ana and the two younger Ticos engaged in what was rapidly becoming a heated discussion on the superiority of each of their own _abuela's_ recipes for Christmas tamales, he gave her a concerned glance and mouthed, _Butterflies?_ Sara nodded. He gave her a knowing smile in reply and a slight wink that only she could see, and was pleased to observe that she perked up a great deal after that.

He wasn't quite sure how it happened, but somehow he had avoided what he thought would be the inevitable and equally awkward twenty questions that new people always seemed to have showered upon them when they first arrived. It was an interpersonal ritual he had never been all that fond of as he wasn't crazy about being the center of attention.

It wasn't as if they ignored him either though. Rather it was as if the group already considered him a longstanding member instead of an interloper who had suddenly appeared in their midst.

Of course he didn't believe for a moment that there wouldn't be questions later. But that didn't keep him from enjoying both the meal and the company.

One certainly couldn't regard the conversation as dull. If anything it was several notches above boisterous that evening. The great tamale debate was just the beginning. Sensing that a change in topic was in order before the discussion of the various virtues of tamales got out of hand, Stephen deftly changed the subject and upon his instigation, Ana began regaling the group with a retelling of her exploits in town in a mixture of English and very colorful Spanish that had everyone including Grissom and Sara grinning, if not practically dying of laughter by the end.

Luis, who was sitting on Grissom's left, leaned in conspiratorially and began to relate to him a story about the camp's encounter with a huge tarantula that had decided a few weeks back to make its home in one of the showers much to everyone chagrin, except Sara's, whom Luis explained merely calmly and collectedly went to locate a large pot, nonchalantly captured up the hairy eight-legged monster in one swift single stroke and proceeded to take it down by the river to set it free as if it were the most natural and normal thing to do in all the world. Sara shrugged and countered that the spider hadn't been THAT big_, _especially when compared to a couple of the ones in Grissom's collection back home that for some unknown reason had a nasty tendency to like to pull a Houdini every once in a while.

After a while, the group began to excuse themselves in ones and twos. They all it seemed suddenly had something they needed or wanted to do before heading off to bed. Bridget grumbled about having to finish up a letter home to her grandfather, whom as he believed that computers were evil, refused to correspond via e-mail. As he was covering most of her expenses while she was in graduate school, Bridget reluctantly complied with what she regarded as his horribly old-fashioned requests for updates via snail mail. Bernie and Luis headed back to their tent, hoping to catch a game of futbol on their shortwave radio. Stephen insisted on taking Sara's dish duty that night and Ana disappeared off to reluctantly handle some grant paperwork she said she had long been procrastinating on completing. Grissom, Sara was amused to see, seemed to appreciate Ana's rue, but then Grissom had in all the years she had known him never been a huge fan of that particular task.

This left the two of them sitting alone at the table.

"And I actually thought they liked you," Sara quipped in response to the rest of the camp's abrupt disappearing act. Grissom's eyes narrowed, but once he realized it was an attempt at a tease more than anything, he merely gave her a grin in reply.

"You okay?" he said after a few minutes.

"Yeah."

"You seemed a little... preoccupied earlier."

"No," she replied with the hint of a smile. "Just distracted."

"Fair enough."

Although the truth was, she had been both preoccupied and distracted by his presence across the table from her at dinner -- distracted by him merely being there and equally preoccupied with the still whole seemingly unreality of it.

Grissom glanced down at his wristwatch and was surprised to find that it wasn't too long after eight o'clock.

"Does everyone always go to bed this early?" he asked curiously.

Sara shook her head in bemusement. "No, but I think they all thought _we_ might like to."

"I see."

"You have to be exhausted."

He shrugged noncommittally.

"Still too wound up?" she said, more as a statement than a real question and then continued with a sigh, "I don't think they quite realize how hard it can be to fall asleep at night after working the graveyard shift for so long.

"So how about a walk," Sara suggested.

_At night, in the rainforest? _his incredulous expression seemed to ask.

"We won't go too far and it's still early enough that you don't have to worry too much about getting eaten," she answered. When he continued to look concerned, she added, "There hasn't been a large carnivore sighting in this part of the park for a very long time. The worst you have to worry about are the mosquitoes and at this time of year not even those really. Besides, Ana did tell you to bring a jacket, right?"

He nodded.

"Good," she replied. "It would seem," and she paused as if searching for the right word and apparently deciding in favor of _strange _continued_, "_To see you without a jacket I mean."

He thought back on all the times she had goaded him about his wearing a jacket in what she seemed to regard as the most inappropriate weather, and had a hard time hiding his amusement. Sara for her part never could understand how it could be ninety degrees out and Grissom would still don a coat as if it were no warmer than fifty.

Which was about the temperature it was at the moment. Just as with deserts, people never thought that the rainforest could be cool -- even cold -- at night.

The warming effect of dinner and the hot tea they had consumed during the meal had already begun to wear off. Grissom had long ago unrolled his shirtsleeves to cover his arms.

"It was snowing in Vegas right before I left," he told her as she began to lead the way back to their tent.

"Snowing?" she queried in disbelief.

"Yes."

"As in actually snowing?"

"Yes," he said again.

"_Real stick on the ground _snow?"

"More than three inches of accumulation on the Strip. Henderson and the outlying areas had more than eight," replied Grissom. "It was the largest snowfall on record for almost a century. They had to shut down McCarran. The city was practically at a standstill."

"I can imagine," Sara said, trying to remember the last time she could recall Vegas getting anything more than a dusting, even a dusting, and was coming up blank. She shrugged her shoulders and quipped, "I guess it is true what they say. Hell really does occasionally freeze over."

"It wasn't all bad," Grissom maintained.

"No," she readily conceded. "It wasn't."

And it hadn't been.

While Vegas was Vegas and Sin City never did seem to sleep or take a break from its frenetic insanity, she had frequently found a measure of peace there, too. It had been the first time she had ever really known a home. But the city had just gotten to be too much - too much noise and neon, too much hate and anger, too much death and destruction on a daily basis, and since they had moved to separate shifts per Ecklie's edict, they had so infrequently seen each other in those last few months leading up to the first time she had left Vegas that she hadn't even had Grissom's reassuring presence to help mitigate the madness.

His voice cut across her thoughts, for which she was immensely grateful. "All that snow, it was..." began Grissom.

"Strange?" she supplied.

"Beautiful," he answered. "Although Hank wasn't all that keen on it, or having to go out in the cold."

"Now that doesn't surprise me at all," she said and then suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. "Hank!" she cried as if suddenly remembering an important detail that had somehow managed to slip her mind until that moment.

"What?" Grissom asked, not quite sure what she was suddenly so concerned about.

"What did you do with Hank?"

Grissom gave her a reassuring smile. "He's with Robin. For now."

"I sure hope you gave her a nice holiday bonus this year," Sara said, thinking about how even when she was still in Vegas Hank had probably spent more time at the dog sitter's than he ever did with either her or Grissom.

"She sends her best by the way," Grissom was saying as they resumed their trek back to the tent. "And at least Hank was beginning to perk up by the time I left," he said. "I wasn't sure he was ever going to forgive me."

"For leaving him behind?"

"No," he replied with a shake of the head. "For letting you go."

Which caused Sara to stop short again.

"He misses you."

"He misses that I used to sneak him extra treats when you weren't looking," countered Sara with a laugh, covering the last few meters between them and the tent in several large measured strides as she did so.

"No," he said with a more determined shake of the head. "He misses _you_."

For it was far too easy for him to recall the despondency that seemed to settle over Hank's features every time he had shown up alone to pick him up from the sitter's. Grissom honestly hadn't known what to do about the dog's listlessness and lack of appetite nor his increasing tendency to lurk and hover about his heels. Nor did he have a suitable answer -- any answer even -- for the forlorn and baleful questioning expression that Hank had begun to perpetually wear.

But the dog really had seemed to perk up just before Grissom left, as if he could sense that change for the better was in the air.

Or perhaps he had just imagined it or was merely projected his own sense and feelings on his canine companion.

_He was lost without you around_, Grissom thought, but did not say. _He was lost without you around and so was I. _

Instead, he let his hand settle on the small of her back. Sara relished the quiet intimacy expressed in that simple touch and was struck yet once again that day momentarily speechless when he said, "I missed you. Everyday."

*******

Sometime later, when Grissom seemed to be dawdling in the act of slipping on his jacket, Sara turned to him and said, "You do trust me, _Gilbert_, not to get you lost on your first night here?"

When she put it that way, he really couldn't protest.

"Come on," she urged, picking up her electric lantern again and extending her other hand to him. "There is something I want to show you."

He took it and she tugged him down one of the paths she hadn't shown him earlier during their what she had tongue-in-cheek labeled _ten-cent tour_. They could for a little while yet still hear Bernie's radio warbling off in the distance. Grissom shook his head and recalling what Greg had been like when he first started at the lab, was beginning to honestly believe that the desire to drown out the silence with whatever noise they could find was merely a trait of the young who had not yet learned how to prize the quiet.

Of course the forest wasn't particularly mute either. As they retreated farther and farther away from camp, the rustle of their feet became more crash and crunching the thicker and denser the brush and undergrowth grew. The hum and buzz of the insects' almost deafening white noise was punctuated with the occasional unfamiliar cry -- whether of birds or something more mammalian, Grissom wasn't sure.

"I would ask you to fill me in on all the gossip," Sara said with a measure of mischief in her voice. "But as this is you we are talking about after all. And I know you _never_ gossip."

"Actually, I do have some _news_," he retorted. His stress on the last word both emphasizing and reiterating the fact that he didn't stoop to such things as rumormongering.

"How is everyone?"

"Good. Busy. Vegas is Vegas."

"And some things never change," Sara finished rather ruefully. "How did everyone take the news?"

"Of my leaving? With a generous measure of incredulity."

"Can you blame them?" she asked for she had certainly felt that way when he had told her.

"The lab will be in good hands with Catherine in charge," he insisted. "Of that I have no doubt."

"Neither do I."

While she and Catherine may have spent a great deal of time stepping on each other's toes and getting on each other's nerves over the years, Sara never once doubted her colleagues' abilities. Although she may have sometimes questioned her means and methodologies.

"She was always better at playing politics than I was," Grissom was saying. "Which should come in handy as they made Ecklie under-sheriff."

"That actually sounds fortuitous," replied Sara. "So now he shouldn't be in Catherine's hair too much. Or busy loosing bodies," she added with an impish sort of lilt to her voice. Conrad Ecklie had never been one of her favorite people.

Grissom couldn't help but smile, remembering all too well one of the last occasions Ecklie had pulled actual field duty. He had to admit the whole thing had been rather amusing to say the least, except perhaps for Doc and David whom Ecklie had readily blamed for the missing Mr. Billmeyer.

"Well, they did have the last laugh," he replied. And they had, as had pretty much everyone else in the lab once the story of the body showing up on a bench in front of CSI decked in a party hat and with a cigar hanging out of his mouth had made the rounds.

"I'm surprised they let you go," Sara sighed. "I thought Grave was short staffed as it was."

"Not for too much longer," he answered. "I have a good feeling about someone who could fill the open position. They decided to make it for a level one, but I think he'll fit right in."

"Oh?" she queried.

"Pathologist turned academic," Grissom offered.

Her tone turned incredulous. "As a level one?"

He nodded. "I have a feeling he'd be amenable to the change."

"Kindred spirit?" she said, musing that Grissom had pretty much done the same thing.

"Of a sort, yes. So I doubt the position will be open for long. And Riley's seemed to have settled in well."

When Sara cocked her head in puzzlement, Grissom added, "Riley Adams. CSI level two. Came from St. Louis toward the end of October. A little impetuous, but the no-nonsense type. Perhaps a bit too much no-nonsense."

Sara smirked. "You mean there is actually someone out there who can resist the Grissom charm?"

While Grissom's brow furrowed at this, he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "She's good and the guys seem to like her. Doc, too. But she's not you."

It was Sara's turn to be taken aback. "Flattery will get you everywhere, you know," she said after a turn. "But the guys like her you say."

"She and Greg seemed to have evolved an interesting relationship."

Sara's quizzical look was obvious even in the faint lamplight.

"Not like that, dear," he hurriedly amended. "At least I don't think so. But they tease and taunt each other in a way that drives Nick crazy. Or so I've heard."

"Well I bet Greg is really enjoying no longer being the low man on the totem pole."

"He made CSI level three a few weeks ago."

"Against all odds," Sara laughed. "Who would have thought?"

"I admit I had my reservations at the time. But I was wrong to doubt him."

"I'm sorry, what was that again?" she inquired.

"I was wrong," Grissom replied. "Greg turned into a first rate CSI." Although when she continued to appear skeptical, it was his turn to ask, "What?"

"I'll have to remember this day," she said, giving his hand a slight squeeze. It was now his turn to gape in puzzlement. "Gil Grissom admitted he was wrong about something," she offered.

"You make it sound like that's a rarity," he retorted, a slight frown tugging at his cheeks. His feet were suddenly firmly rooted where he stood.

"Well, it is," Sara rejoined. "But mostly because you're usually not wrong."

"I suppose I was hoping you might find it memorable for other reasons."

She smiled and tugged him forward. "Come on," she urged. "We're almost there."

_There_ turned out to be a small clearing where a fallen chicle tree had left a portion of the canopy open to the sky.

Sara switched off the lantern. For a long moment they just stood there waiting for their eyes to readjust to the darkness. When they finally had, the two of them peered up.

It was a cloudless night and while the stars themselves had had plenty of time to wink and blink into existence, the moon hadn't yet risen to cast its silvery pall on everything, so there was nothing to diminish the spectacle.

And spectacle -- and spectacular -- it was. For the sky was indeed alive with stars -- more stars than Grissom had seen for a very long time. A veritable ocean of them stretched as far as their eyes could see.

"I'd invite you to sit," Sara was saying. "But you have to be careful about that. Not all the bugs are friendly around here. But the view is...."

"Breathtaking," he breathed, although he was looking at her when he said it.


	5. Five: An Unusual Cure for Insomnia

**Five: An Unusual, but Particularly Effective Cure for Insomnia**

Gil Grissom was no stranger to insomnia. That he had for most of his twenty-plus year career frequently suffered from work-related sleeplessness had been bad enough, but during the months that Sara had been gone, the usual restlessness had seemed not only to grow worse, but more and more often, if and when he was finally able to fall asleep, he found no real rest, only nightmares instead.

Nightmares filled with the frustration of not being able to get passed locked doors. Filled with the scalding burn of the desert wind upon his face. Filled with the image him of peering down at his empty hands only to find them bathed in blood and lastly and perhaps worst of all filled with silence, an utter and absolute silence that nothing could penetrate.

The dreams had been so aching and intensely disturbing that he had begun to actually prefer the incessant insomnia to the prospect of waking in chest-heaving, heart-thumping, gut-wrenching cold sweats on a regular basis.

There was only one thing worse: the occasions when after a rare night of blissfully dreamless sleep he would start to stir and in the immeasurable interval between wakefulness and dreaming suddenly feel so certain that Sara was there, certain that he could feel the heat of her in the bed beside him, certain of the sure steady sounds of her snores, certain that he drew in with each of his own breaths the familiar scent of her.

Except when he ultimately opened his eyes, all he found was the absence of her surrounding him.

He had thought, or more likely had eagerly hoped, that having Sara, the real Sara, living -- breathing -- warm Sara, lying beside him again would mean the end to his sleeping woes. He had been wrong.

For he should by all rights be fast asleep instead of wide awake. In fact, he should have been asleep hours ago. He wasn't.

It wasn't that he wasn't tired. He was, but no matter how bone-weary his body might be, his mind still stubbornly insisted on racing a million miles a minute so that sleep just would not come.

Perhaps, he began to muse, he had somehow managed to tire himself into wakefulness. The prospect was not as ludicrous as it sounded. He'd seen it happen before; had experienced it first-hand himself upon occasions too numerous to count.

Or perhaps with all the day's newness and excitement, his mind just hadn't had enough time to fully process and assimilate everything that had happened.

It was equally possible that his wakefulness resulted from being surrounded by strange noises as he lay in a strange bed in a strange place.

For it had been nearer to twenty-five than twenty years since he had last slept in the rainforest. And while Vegas was not precisely quiet at night, he had over time, grown accustomed to its often discordant melodies. The forest was different, especially at night. It was as if half of its inhabitants had suddenly woken when the sun went down -- and probably had. Although it really was merely that unfamiliarity alone that made the night seem so strange, for the polyphony of buzz and hum and drone, of cry and creep seemed to carry with it an underlying harmony as poignant as any musical chord.

He thought back those nearly twenty-five years. He had been younger then than Sara was the first time they had met in San Francisco. And while he had been gallivanting across the Brazilian rain forest, Sara, who at the time hadn't yet turned twelve, had already seen and lived through more violence and hurt and abuse than most would ever encounter in a lifetime. Not that she had managed to leave much of that misery behind after her father had been murdered and her mother jailed. While Sara hardly ever spoke of it, Grissom had heard too many horror stories, personally seen too many things to believe that her life in the system had been all that much of an improvement. But Sara had survived. Certainly not unscathed, but she had.

_Sara... _

While he could probably postulate enough _perhaps _to keep him awake for the rest of the night, he knew that Sara was the most likely cause for his current bout of insomnia.

Only in this case, it was her presence, rather than her absence that kept him awake.

He could feel her begin to stir and realized that he had over the course of the last several minutes, tightened his grasp on her, drawn her as close to him as he could. The gesture had been unintentional, purely instinctive and absolutely irrational. There were no real dangers out here that she would need protection from and Sara he knew would balk at the mere implication that she ever needed to be protected in the first place. Of course that knowing hadn't exactly kept him from feeling and sometimes being overprotective when it came to her.

Fat lot of good it had done, he rued, remembering all too well how powerless he had been when he had most wanted and needed to keep her safe. Vegas could be dangerous enough as it was. Their work as crime scene investigators had put them in close contact with that peril on a daily basis. But some cases, some investigations had proven more hazardous and haunting than others.

Adam Trent's desperate attempt to hold Sara hostage had shaken Grissom so profoundly, that it completely shattered his naïve belief that there was and always would be, time enough to court Sara the way he always thought she should have been.

And Natalie....

He didn't even want to think about Natalie and all the might have happeneds that almost were.

So when instead of leading to waking, Sara's stirrings only caused her to nestle nearer, Grissom let out a sigh of relief. He really hadn't wanted to wake her.

It was early -- or late -- depending on how one divvied up the night and he was all too familiar with how rare a quiet and peaceful night's sleep could be. For over the last couple of months, they had certainly become things more devoutly to be wished than actually possessed.

Several hours earlier, when they had both still been awake, he had considered asking Sara how her nightmares had been of late, if both the time away and distance had managed to mitigate them as he yet hoped they might do his.

But he hadn't wanted to talk about such things -- not then and there -- not when the two of them were so contentedly lying together, their bodies and faces close, quietly kissing - touching - talking.

In many ways, he was almost glad the two of them had that night it seemed to reach a consensus, unspoken as it was, that there was no reason to rush or hurry. For while he had thought of this moment, dreamt of this moment, hoped for it for so long, he found that all those thoughts and dreams and hopes paled in comparison to the reality of being with her.

It was almost as if he had somehow forgotten the feel of her touch; the way it felt to touch her in return and was discovering that intoxicating pleasure of simply being together with her all over again.

Just having her near was overwhelming.

So he was content with that, relishing the quiet easy intimacy they had so often shared. Sara appeared to feel the same way.

Grissom had to fight back a chuckle, recalling how earlier as they had lain there curled up together, she had tried so hard and yet failed so spectacularly to stifle a yawn, that he could not resist asking her if she was tired of him already. Sara had shook her head, pursed her lips with the same bemusement she always displayed when she thought he was being ridiculous and told him that she was _just sleepy_. The yawn that followed, being larger and therefore more obvious had only served to amuse him further and proven her point.

However, he had simply drawn her to him then. She still lay there now, snuggled up against him beneath the thin cotton sheet, with her head on his shoulder, the tips of her fingers resting against the bare skin just above the collar of his undershirt and her palm pressed over his heart. He held her close, smoothed her hair, buried his face in the nape of her neck and breathed in deep the scent of her that now had an earthy quality to it. Probably, he reasoned, due to the unfiltered water they used for showering.

Her breathing had slowed, deepened not quite into a snore but close, something he would have to tease her about later, especially after what Stephen had said. Sara could protest all she wanted that Stephen had made up Bridget's complaint to serve as a pretext for changing her sleeping arrangements and that his words proved nothing, Grissom didn't care.

All in all, apart from his racing thoughts, it was peaceful, lying there with her beneath the gauzy mosquito netting. It reminded him of the first time they had slept together that day after they had found Nick. He had slept so soundly that afternoon. It had been dark when he had finally woken up with her still nestled beside him. That day, as in this one, she had been comfort and warmth and light and life after so many months and years of cold and dark and death.

While ultimately he had been unable to resist kissing her awake that evening, he had no intentions of doing the same now. Besides, it had been too long, far too long since he had last had the pleasure of having her asleep in his arms.

The last time. He closed his eyes at the thought of it. That night had been very different and the memory of it would probably always fill him with both sorrow and regret.

He had felt so cold then, so lost and distant in knowing that Sara would soon be gone. He wasn't sure what had been worse: not knowing that she would soon be gone or knowing that she would and there was nothing he could say or do that could change that fact. All he did know was he had ached with knowing that night, which was probably why he had said the things he had when she had so unexpectedly shown up at his office when he had already expected her to already be long gone.

He hadn't wanted her to go. Hadn't understood why she couldn't stay or why she was so certain that she had to go away. He couldn't and wouldn't pretend that he completely understood her reasons even now. But all his hurt and anger had done was lead to heartache for both of them and left him with nothing but the unsettling presence of her absence in his life.

Even now, as utterly irrational and absolutely illogical as he knew the entire train of thought to be, it was still hard to believe, despite all the proof he had of its certainty, that he was really here, that all of this was really real and not just a dream.

That was, in the end, what he really did fear, that the previous day had been nothing more substantial than a passing dream, so that if he allowed himself to surrender to sleep, he would but wake to find himself back in Vegas again, back in his own bed once more alone, back with Hank as his only sleeping companion.

It was foolish. He knew that. That didn't make his fear feel any less founded.

So as a thin ribbon of moonlight began to creep between the tent flaps, he just held her close. For even with his worries, he still longed for nothing more than to be able to remain as long as possible here in this moment with her.

He marveled at how soft and warm her bare skin was when his fingertips began to trace the ridges of her ribs beneath her camisole.

Earlier that night, when he had returned from brushing his teeth, he had found himself strangely reassured by the fact that Sara still wore the same thin-strapped tank top and light cotton pants he was accustomed to seeing her sleep in. With all the changes, it had been nice to see that some things hadn't changed.

Then suddenly, it was quiet, almost deathly quiet, so that all he could hear above the rapid thumping of his heart was the sounds of his ragged breathing, and the soft ebb and flow of Sara's shuffling half snores. After so many hours of a cacophony of noise, the abrupt lack of it proved disconcerting to say the least.

He hadn't realized just how visceral his reaction to the variation had been until he began to feel Sara stir again in response. First, her fingers twitched, and then her whole body seemed to arch away before relaxing back into his again. This time, however, she didn't go back to sleep.

Her voice, still thick and drowsy, softly murmured, "Gil?"

"Go back to sleep," came his soothing whisper of a reply.

But Sara had instantly registered the alertness in his voice and was now very much awake herself. She propped herself up on one elbow and peered down at him, intently searching his eyes, his face before saying, "What is it?"

He gave her a dismissive shake of the head. "Nothing," he answered, and then feeling a little sheepish added, "It's just quiet," by way of an explanation.

"Must be after one then," she observed absently.

Grissom retrieved his watch from the table. When he held it up to the lamplight, it read ten past one.

"How did you know that?" he asked, equally perplexed and impressed at the same time.

Sara chuckled. "Because around here it always goes quiet right after the moon rises," she explained matter-of-factly. "It can take some getting used to."

But her concern was genuine when she asked, "Is that what woke you -- the quiet?"

When he did not immediately reply, she said, "Don't tell me you've been awake all this time."

He didn't see the point in lying, so Grissom merely nodded.

"You haven't slept at all?" she said incredulous.

This time he gave her a half-smile with his shake of the head.

Sara sighed. "Do I even want to know when the last time you slept was?" she asked. "And no, dozing on the plane doesn't count, Gil."

He squinted slightly as if trying to work out the answer. He hadn't dared to fall asleep on the bus ride from San Jose and she was right about whatever half sleep he might or might not have gotten on the plane, it didn't count. He hadn't risked a nap before his flight out of fear of oversleeping. Nor had he really slept the day before, there had just been too many last minute details to take care of then. That meant it must have been --

"Thursday afternoon," he reluctantly replied, as it was now Sunday morning, even if just barely.

"For?"

"Six hours," he answered which was stretching the truth, as it had been more like four, if he was really being honest with himself and her.

"You have to be exhausted."

He merely shrugged.

As tempting as it might have been for her to tease him about her going to get him a glass of warm milk to help him sleep, Sara recognized that this wasn't one of those times that warm anything could help.

Sleep was what he needed most right now -- sleep and rest and stillness.

Their earlier walk may have burned off the last of his excess nervous physical energy, but whether or not he was physically tired she knew wasn't the problem.

"Your head keeping you awake --"

While it wasn't really a question, he nodded in response anyway.

Sara gave him a soft knowing smile, for she knew how that went all too well. But she also knew what to do about it.

Grissom, or more precisely Grissom's mind, needed a diversion. And not just any diversion, but the kind that required single-minded focus and concentration.

Yes, what he needed now was --

A good mental chess match.

It might not be sexy and even seem counter-intuitive, but the tactic had often proven quite effective in the past, particularly after a difficult shift when sleep just would not seem to come no matter how tired either of them were.

Sara was a competent chess player, no where near Grissom's league, but she could hold her own long enough for the game to produce its desired effect: to provide a singular thing for his mind to focus on long enough to help still the tumult of thoughts rushing about his head and allow him to finally fall asleep.

"Come here," she whispered and tugged him along with her as she shifted onto her back, until they had in effect, reversed their earlier positions and his head now rested on her chest. Her fingers alternated between lingering in his hair and tracing abstract patterns on one shoulder blade, while his edged beneath her shirt to curve themselves around her waist.

The simple comfort to be found in holding and being held in this way alone already seemed to help, for Grissom let out a long deep breath and relaxed further against her.

"Do you remember," she asked, "where we left off that last game."

Sara could swear she could feel him smile. "I was two moves from having you in check," he answered, knowing immediately what she was referring to.

"It was more like four," she countered, which garnered her a disbelieving laugh.

In the end, they were both wrong. Grissom had her in check in three and had captured her king within five. Sara wasn't surprised or disappointed at the outcome, even though she did tell him that she swore she was going to beat him one of these days.

They were only a handful of moves into their next match, when Sara paused before announcing her next move to place a kiss into his hair. Then almost as if she had read his mind or merely understood the source of his apprehension, she whispered, "It's okay, you know, to fall asleep. I'll still be here in the morning when you wake up. I promise."

Grissom did know. Even with all of his fears, he did know, but it still felt good to hear her say the words anyway.

As they resumed play, Grissom felt for the first time in a long time, safe and snug and at peace. He closed his eyes.

It wasn't too much later that Sara was pleased to hear his voice begin to trail off. She did, however, have to restrain a chuckle of her own when he finally began to snore in earnest.

*******

To be continued in _Awakenings._


	6. Six: Awakenings

**Six: Awakenings**

It was still dark outside when Sara next woke, which was not an unusual occurrence. She was, more often than not, up before the sun. What was unusual was that she woke up feeling strangely cold.

"Gil," she sighed when the reason for the sudden chill became apparent. At some point during the early morning hours, Grissom had rolled over, taking the blanket and most of the sheet with him and leaving Sara more uncovered than not.

It wasn't for the first time, and she was rather pleased at the prospect that it wouldn't likely be the last.

As she knew from the veritable years of experience the futility of any attempt to retrieve the covers once Grissom had them that firmly in his possession and as she had no desire to wake him at the moment, she shifted onto one side to face him. When she molded her body into the relaxed line of his back and hugged him close, it was not just for the warmth, but for the reassurance she so often found in his presence.

The night before it had been easy, so blissfully easy almost, to fall asleep in his arms.

It had nothing to do with her being tired of his company, despite what he intimated. As she was so infamous for her insomnia, Grissom seemed to get an inordinate amount of pleasure in teasing her about how easily she seemed to fall asleep with him. The truth was she had always felt safe and comfortable and comforted with him in a way she hadn't been with anyone else.

That didn't mean she never had problems sleeping or that there weren't any nightmares when they were together, but she did sleep better when he was around, and when neither of them could sleep, which happened all too often, his company often made the long sleepless afternoons more bearable -- enjoyable even.

And while when she had first come to Vegas a great deal of fuss had been made of her sleeping habits, or more precisely her _lack of sleeping_ habits, she knew that Grissom's could be almost as bad. So she hadn't been exactly taken aback to find him wide-awake in the middle of the night.

The sudden silence that heralded the moon could be genuinely disconcerting. Something that hadn't taken her very long to discover as she had spent quite a few nights awake long past the moonrise when she had first arrived. So the quiet was certainly a plausible cause for his abrupt return to wakefulness. Though that he hadn't slept at all hadn't really come as much of a surprise either.

However, he was sleeping now, thank goodness, and hopefully would for a while yet.

While he had had more color in his cheeks and his eyes were brighter than when she had last seen him, he still looked tired, more tired than just the stress of traveling could produce. Sara knew that Ana wouldn't protest if she asked to let Grissom sleep in for a few extra hours. Ana knew all too well the physical toll that suddenly finding oneself immersed in the heat and humidity of the rainforest could produce, so there wouldn't be any need for further explanation.

Which was perhaps a good thing as Sara was still finding Grissom's presence inexplicable.

Even here and now, with him very real beside her, there was still a measure of unreality to it all. Part of her wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't currently asleep herself and in the midst of a delightfully wonderful dream. Nor had enough time passed for the novelty to wear off, for her to become used to having him with her, let alone this near again.

So it was still honestly hard to believe.

But of all the many things Sara Sidle had learned from Gil Grissom over the years, one of the first and most important lessons was _when in doubt, follow the evidence. _

So she did.

Even if her eyes were not to be believed, she was surrounded by the rich, deep evenness of his breathing that was not quite yet a snore, but only just and she couldn't help but smile at the sound of it.

When she snuggled ever closer, she breathed in the familiar fragrance of the unscented laundry detergent he liked to use. It was a smell that always seemed so quintessentially Grissom, as he so seldom used any soap or shampoo that wasn't unscented, nor did he tend to use cologne or aftershave. These practices left him smelling _clean,_ for lack of a better word. But it wasn't a cold, sterile, antiseptic sort of clean -- the kind that haunted hospitals and doctors' offices and the morgue -- but a warm sort of smell. That it was that morning, now tinged with the faint hint of sweat was more inviting than off-putting.

Then when she slipped her fingers between his, she found his hands were as soft and warm and real as she had always remembered them to be and closed her eyes at the comfort of it.

However tempting though it might be to want to kiss him, to feel his lips on hers and their breath combine and fill her with that incomprehensible breathlessness, Sara knew he needed sleep more than she needed the reassurance. Besides, she still had the memories of his quiet kisses the night before to recall the taste of him.

So the evidence was there, unequivocal, irrefutable. She hadn't merely imagined him into being. The morning, as the day before, however dreamlike it had and been or seemed, was real beyond all shadow of any doubt.

That truth was amazing enough, but it was the context -- context of course being key, for as Grissom had always maintained: _evidence without context had no meaning_ -- that shocked and astonished her the most. She had been surprised to see him, happy to see him, beyond happy to see him again. But that he had so readily and willingly given up his work and life in Vegas to come and stay, merely the idea floored her, let alone the reality of it.

Yet, there was still that little voice in the back of her head, the one that had flourished and thrived upon years' -- decades' -- worth of insecurities, that whispered and worried as it was always wont to do, that eventually Grissom would end up both disappointed and regretting his choice.

Sara hurriedly attempted to shove those unpleasant thoughts aside. She didn't want to think about that, not when he was so close that her breathing seemed to naturally fall into sync with his.

On some level, she knew they were both aware that it wasn't all going to be as easy as just picking up where they left off. Considering how poorly they had parted, perhaps that wasn't altogether a bad thing. But they weren't starting all over again either. She supposed they were meeting somewhere in the middle, between strangeness and familiarity, tenderness and passion, the past and the future.

And while she would have liked to remain snug and warm and content in bed with him beside her, she was too anxious that her continued presence would rouse him. Besides the day would soon break and beckon and there were still work to be done, unexpected visitors having shown up or no.

So Sara eased herself from his side, carefully slipped from the cot and quickly dressed in the dimness as quietly as she could.

Although she did linger just for a moment longer after tugging the blanket tighter around him to watch him sleep. It was good to see him asleep like that, relaxed and at peace, the lines and shadows having finally faded from his face.

She was relieved though that when she ultimately gave into the temptation of one last gesture of affection and smoothed his rumpled hair before leaning in and lightly kissing him there, that he sighed and did not stir but merely slumbered on.

*******

Dr. Velasquez, who never really answered to anything but _Ana_ as a matter of course, ran her research station the same way Grissom had run the graveyard shift back in Vegas, meaning everyone pretty much knew what needed to be done and did it.

As cooking, fetching water and most of the rest of the day's preparations all typically involved more light than lanterns allowed and the old diesel generator was so noisy that it could wake the dead -- let alone any living person who might want to sleep -- everyone but Sara seem to see little point to rising before daylight. Since day tended to break around a quarter to six, waiting for the sun seldom led to what most people would have considered sleeping in late.

Despite the fact that she had never really been a morning person, Sara enjoyed the peace and quiet of those pre-dawn hours. Nearly a decade of working the graveyard shift had trained her to regard mornings as the middle or ends of her work day rather than the beginnings, but three months of early rising had finally converted her. The time gave her a chance to pause and think and reflect on a great many things, although she had to admit that at times not always those of the most pleasant variety. Sara had always been prone to brooding and she knew it and knew that the only way to counteract the tendency was to busy her mind with something else, preferably work of some sort.

This morning though wasn't really one for ruminating. She caught herself daydreaming repeatedly as she pulled out the specimen trays she had been working on the day before. She still had several she wanted to get sorted and entered into the system before the backlog got to be too overwhelming. It was the act she had been engaged in the day previously when George, the sometimes resident and perpetually mischief-making capuchin, and one Gil Grissom had shown up in very short succession.

When Sara had first arrived, Ana had both warned and apologized for the tedium involved in the species identification and archiving process, to which Sara could only laugh in reply. After she had finished recounting how she had been used to spending hours combing and itemizing the contents of crime scenes, garbage dumpsters and other not so savory places, Ana readily conceded that cataloguing probably wasn't that bad after all.

Frankly, the task had come as a nice change and Sara found she enjoyed it immensely.

And while she never would admit it, she had also found a great deal of pleasure in the cooking that she like everyone else at camp was called to do. Like the rest of the larger and more time-consuming tasks, cooking was done by rota. The reason in the case of cookery had less to do with maintaining a general sense of fairness and more to do with the fact that no one else really liked having to do it.

Perhaps, it was all of her fond memories of the years of Grissom's _Chemistry of Cooking_ lessons that did it, but Sara frequently found that she looked forward to the days she was scheduled for kitchen duty. Regardless, the lessons had certainly come in handy. But since she still refused to handle raw meat on sheer principle and was fairly certain that the rest of the research team did not possessed a keen desire to become vegetarians, Sara sincerely doubted that if her predilection came out, her duties would be adjusted. She did wonder though if now that there were seven of them, if everyone would be assigned a set particular day of the week to cook.

This week, Sara had pulled Sunday duty, which meant both less pressure and more complications. Mondays through Fridays both breakfast and lunch had to be ready before everyone left since typically they spent the entire day out in the field. Saturdays being market days, people usually fended for themselves after breakfast and in order to relieve a bit of the monotony of camp food, often lunched in town. Sundays were more relaxed, meaning that breakfast was a little later and lunch frequently consisted of leftovers and the spoils brought back the day before while everything was still at its freshest. It was, however, though the one day when dinner rather than lunch was the main meal of the day. This departure from typical Tico custom had been one of Ana's concessions to Stephen's Midwestern American upbringing where Sunday dinner it seemed bordered on the sacred.

As apart from breakfast and the morning's chores which had to be completed seven days a week, dinner was pretty much the only time you were likely to see anyone at camp on Sundays. In theory, little "official" work occurred that day. Luis and Bernie usually hitched rides into town, ostensibly to go see their families, but Sara thought it much more likely that they did it to go meet girls. Most of the time, Bridget was either working on crunching the data she had gathered from the week before, or out in the field acquiring even more data for her doctoral thesis. Everyone else frequently used the time to catch up on any work, reading or correspondence they hadn't had time to complete during the week.

When six-thirty rolled around, the time chores typically began, Ana seemed surprised to see Sara up and dressed and in the middle of putting away the specimens she hadn't finished with yet. The older woman gave her a rather inquiring look, although she didn't ask. She only told Sara not to bother to bring Grissom out to the new plot she was in the process of laying out until after twelve as she had some traps she wanted to check on in a couple of other sites before then. Although noon, being the height and heat of the day, wasn't really the best of times to be slogging through the rainforest, Sara recognized Ana's request as an indirect way of communicating that she wanted to make sure Grissom had gotten enough rest before having to face the forest. That or she wanted to give the two of them a little time and privacy.

When you lived, worked, slept and ate in such close quarters, privacy was usually at a premium. However, Sara found that everyone seemed to think that she and Grissom might need space and time of their own and had gone out of their way to provide it. She was sure Ana had something to do with it.

But she didn't really have time to much ponder her current boss's behind-the-scenes machinations. There was work to be done.

*******

Grissom stirred to the warmth of the sun on his face. He had slept like he hadn't in weeks or months, almost like the dead. In the days that followed, he wondered how he could have possibly slept through the hustle and bustle of camp in the morning. But that morning, he had woken to the almost overpowering sense of strangeness that frequently accompanied waking up in an unfamiliar bed. It had been disconcerting to say the least. And he had blinked bewildered and disoriented for a moment, until he heard the soft sound of singing from behind him. He didn't recognize the tune, but he knew the voice well enough and while Grissom doubted Sara was even aware that she was doing it, he had always been fond of that particular habit of hers.

He closed his eyes, rolled over and let out a long, deep sigh of relief that caught in his throat at the feel of her fingers in his hair. Then the warmth of her breath and mouth was on his cheek. He turned. Their lips brushed. He was beyond pleased when instead of flinching at the contact, she moved to deepen the kiss until it grew into one of those long, leisurely sorts of kisses that only ends when the body begins to insist that breathing is not an optional but necessary activity.

If he had been dazed or drowsy just moments before, he was now certainly very much alert and aware and awake and alive in ways he hadn't been in months.

Her voice hadn't yet lost its breathy quality when she whispered, "Good morning, sleepy head."

He opened his eyes to find her perched on the empty cot, beaming down at him. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, especially as she said, "It's good to know that some things never change. You snore just as loudly as usual."

Grissom couldn't help but return her grin.

"Whatever you say, dear," he readily -- perhaps a bit too readily -- and amusedly acquiesced, much to her hilarity.

She leaned in to give him another kiss. After they had broken away, Grissom inquired after the time.

"A little before ten," she replied. "Ana thought it a good idea to let you rest up and sleep in. If it had been up to me, I would have woken you at the crack of dawn and put you straight to work."

"Payback for all the times I called you into work early?" he asked.

She didn't deign to give him an answer to this, instead she said, having an increasingly hard time keeping her face straight, "Lucky for you I was overruled."

Grissom merely nodded in agreement. Taking in first the way her hair had become slightly unruly as it always did when she brushed it back while she was working, the lack of creases in her clothes and the deep pencil indentations on the side of her middle and the pad of her index fingers as well as the fresh trace of pencil lead along the edge of her hand, he surmised that she had been awake and working for a while now.

"How long have you been up?" he asked.

"Since around five."

The answer didn't surprise him in the least. "You should have woken me," he maintained.

Sara shook her head. For a moment, all trace of teasing was gone, to be replaced by a tone more of tenderness than anything as she said, "You needed the rest." Although the levity was soon back. "Don't get used to it," she announced extending a steaming mug to him.

"I won't," Grissom pledged. But as he did so, he was thinking that while he probably would never quite get used to the idea of waking up to her every morning, he really was going to enjoy the prospect of trying.

"This is horribly unfair you know," he said, sitting up to take the mug from her.

"What is?"

"Do you know how long I have been attempting to bring you breakfast in bed?" he asked by way of an explanation.

For it never failed, even during the times when the two of them had spent most of their free and sleep time together, Sara would inevitably either rise and be out of bed before him, or with an uncanny sense of timing, stroll into the kitchen just as he was finishing his preparations.

"It's all your fault. If you didn't make food that smelled so good it could rouse someone out of a sound sleep --" she countered. "You could always keep trying though," Sara laughed. "I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunities in the future."

Grissom had to smile at that, at the ease with which she acknowledged they had a future, something a few months ago he hadn't been all that certain of himself.

"Besides," she continued affably, "coffee does not breakfast make." Then as he bent to take a drink, she added, "I know you usually take yours black, but Bernie made it this morning and he tends to make it a little strong, even by Costa Rican standards. Plus, it's had a while to ferment.

"So believe me you'll want the milk and sugar. Otherwise the stuff is so potent that it makes what they used to brew in the break room seem like tap water."

If that was so, the milk and sugar did sound like a good idea, for what they had typically drank in Vegas was acrid enough to peel paint.

He took a couple of hesitant sips.

"Why don't you get dressed," Sara was saying. "I'll make you some breakfast."

Not above teasing himself, Grissom gave her a disbelieving look.

"Not one word about my cooking," she cautioned as she rose to go. "Otherwise you might just have to fend for yourself."

He knew she wasn't serious and he hadn't been either. In truth, he had no real concerns when it came to her cooking.

Although when they had first gotten together, he had discovered much to his chagrin that Sara hadn't been joking when she had told him that ordering take-out was the full extent of her cooking abilities. But over the next couple of years, Sara had, as she did with most things, proven a quick learner and ultimately quite adept at it.

He was recalling with a great deal of fondness a few of their times in the kitchen together as he bent to reach for one of his boots.

"You might want to tap those," she said, pausing just before the entrance to the tent. "You'd be surprised at what sometimes tumbles out. Well, maybe _you _wouldn't be," she conceded. "But it's better to be safe than sorry."

*******

Grissom finished his coffee and spent a few minutes freshening up in the makeshift bathroom before dressing. He made up the bed before joining Sara in the camp's kitchen area. Even if he would have forgotten where it was, it was easy enough to find. All he had to do was follow his nose.

The piquant aroma of roasted corn filled the air and he could soon see why. Sara was turning a series of homemade corn tortillas on a large griddle.

She started slightly when he came up behind her and said, "It smells delicious."

"Sorry there's no toast," Sara apologized. "With all the humidity, bread just molds too fast and is too labor-intensive to make all the time," she explained. "Tortillas are simpler. Sort of like corn pancakes," she continued with a grin. "Simply just add water and salt to the mix and heat."

She turned to him and gave him a wry sort of smile as she said, "I was, you know, paying attention to other things in your kitchen besides just you."

Grissom nodded appreciatively and said, "I can see that," and after watching her crack several eggs into a pan added, "But I thought you didn't do eggs."

"Well, some things do change," Sara sighed. "Not everyone is as easy to please as you when it comes to breakfast. But I still don't do omelets. So you'll have to be happy with_ huevos fritos_.

"Although I could probably rustle up some ants to go on top if you want. Or you could just leave the plate unattended for a few minutes and they'll probably find you. They're fairly indiscriminate and aggressive around here. I don't know how they manage to do it, but they get into everything -- the flour, the sugar, the coffee -- no matter what you do."

"Just think of it as extra protein," Grissom quipped.

"I think I'll still pass."

She was in the midst of dishing up the eggs and detailing the rest of the camp's movements for the day, when she suddenly had to put down the plate.

As she was facing away from him at the time, Grissom didn't immediately notice and as he was frankly amused at the fact that every one else was rather conveniently absent, was busy saying, "So you got stuck babysitting the new guy --"

Sara tried to keep her voice as light as she could as she clutched reflexively at her left arm. "It was me or Luis," she replied. "And I really didn't think you wanted him to be the one to wake you."

Grissom chuckled, "Not if he does it the same way you do."

When she didn't immediately reply, he reached out to touch her shoulder.

"Sara?"

"It's nothing," she answered, but the hiss of pain that slipped passed her lips belied the truth.

He gently eased her to face him, to find that she was massaging her left arm. Afraid that she might have burnt or otherwise injured herself, he pulled her hand away.

"It's nothing," Sara insisted. "Really."

But he brushed aside her protests to take a look for himself, only to see that there didn't appear to be anything wrong.

"It's just the humidity," she explained. "It makes the place where the bones fused back together again ache is all." Her attempt at a smile didn't quite make it to her eyes, nor did her saying, "Almost makes me look forward to the heat of the day," do anything to dispel his concern.

Her eyes closed at the warmth of his hand on her arm. She stopped breathing at the feel of his thumb brushing the sensitive skin just above her elbow and did not exhale again until after his hand had come to curve over her shoulder and that same thumb had begun to gently caress the hollow of her neck.

Grissom's voice was suddenly very soft and distant when he said, "She can't hurt you ever again."

"Or you."

Sara felt his grasp involuntarily tighten and when she met his eyes, found them intent with something she couldn't name. They stood there for a few long, almost breathless moments, before he leaned in and kissed her gently in a way that was more longing than possessive.

When they broke apart, he rested his head against hers. Sara's lips twitched into a nervous sort of smile as his fingers tugged on one of the curls that now framed her face.

"I know it's different," she said and then added almost apologetically, "A little short," before plowing on with "And there's nothing you can do about the curliness with all the humidity" so quickly that she didn't hear him say, "I like it."

So she was caught off guard when he, as if to impart some long-held secret, which in some ways it was, brushed his lips against her cheek before whispering into her ear what he had felt for a long time, but had never quite managed to say, "I have always been captivated by those curls."

"Gil --"

Which was when the stovetop decided to issue both a loudly insistent sizzle and pop and the sudden scent of something burning into the air.

Sara hastily returned her attention back to her cooking.

She gestured to the table. "Maybe you should --" she began.

Grissom gave her a reassuring smile. "Are you trying to tell me that I am distracting you?" he asked.

"No -- Yes --" she stammered, still more than a little flustered.

Understanding, he nodded and retreated to the table.

In a few minutes, Sara joined him, placing a heavily laden plate in front of him as she did so.

Eying the enormous pile of eggs and the generous helpings of the ever-ubiquitous _gallo pinto_, he said, "I thought you said everyone else was gone for the day."

"They are."

"How much do you think one person can eat?" he asked still agog.

"You'll need it," Sara asserted with a genuine grin this time. "Believe me. So eat up and I'll take you to meet up with Ana."


	7. Seven: Settling In

**Seven: Settling In**

Sara was so intent in her attempts to determine the species of _Cathidium_ she was in the process of classifying that she didn't hear Grissom's approach. This meant that while he had gently placed a hand on her shoulder so as not to startle her, she jumped anyway and ended up dropping the miniscule specimen, forceps and all.

They barely missed bumping heads as they both hurriedly bent to retrieve it, but Grissom, who had the advantage of having not been the one caught off guard, was slightly faster. He eyed the bug curiously for a moment before placing the dung beetle beneath the desk magnifier to get a better look.

"_Canthidium variolosum," _he murmured appreciatively. "Nice specimen."

Sara sighed and shook her head, trying very hard not to be miffed at the fact that he had been able to immediately identify its precise genus and species when she had been pouring over the prospect for the last ten minutes.

Of course this was Gil Grissom after all. It would have been a lot more surprising if he hadn't known.

Besides, it was really hard to be irritated at him at the moment, present circumstances being what they were.

Not that Sara had ever had much luck staying upset with him for very long, at least not when he was standing right before her and especially when he was, as she discovered when she peered up at him, beaming at her in the way he was now.

He was so flushed that her first thought was to worry about heat stroke. He was certainly a lot pinker than he had been even the day before, despite her earlier strictures about having to frequently reapply sunscreen while out in the field. But the warm glow he was giving off wasn't just relegated to his face. His eyes were smiling even more brightly than his mouth was. Which was when she realized that look portended something else entirely.

It had been far too long, she thought unable to resist his contagious grin, since she'd last seem him wear that expression, one that was part excitement, part wonder, part practically boyish enthusiasm.

It was an arresting sight.

For while Sara had over the years, frequently glimpsed that look -- it had been one of the first things she had noticed about Grissom when they met at the Forensic Academy conference in San Francisco more than a decade ago -- as of late, it had been an air he had seemed to wear less and less, especially and understandably after Warrick had been killed.

So she was thrilled -- ecstatic even -- to see it again. It was almost as if that old spark -- that essence of him -- had begun to flare back into being once more.

Yet she was so taken aback by it all, that all she could do once she was finally able to find her voice again was stammer out the obvious, "You're back."

Grissom nodded.

As he returned the specimen to her, Sara gave him another thorough once over. "And in one piece," she observed. Then after taking in not just the sunburn and the fact that he looked more hot and sweaty than she was used to seeing him, but that he was also favoring his right side added with a sigh, "Well mostly."

From her own experience in the forest, Sara knew all too well that the repeated bending, kneeling, scraping, reaching and various other awkward positions that the field work seemed to frequently entail led to sore muscles, stiff joints and a general sense of fatigue. However, Grissom didn't seem either to notice nor care.

It was then that Sara realized that there was no sign of Ana.

As the new plot was still under development and the path leading to it was little more than a narrow track produced by their infrequent footsteps, her tone was half-perplexed; half-impressed when she said, "And all on your own."

Grissom withdrew the handheld GPS unit from the pocket of his trousers. "Electronic breadcrumbs," he offered.

She smiled, thinking she should have known.

Then wondering for a moment if the afternoon had somehow gotten away from her, as it was often wont to do, she glanced down at her watch.

It was only just three.

Considering it was a good half-hour walk back from the site, that meant Ana had only kept Grissom out for a little over two hours, which was peculiar. But then ever since Grissom had arrived, peculiar seemed to have become the new ordinary.

"So what did you do?" she asked, returning the specimen to its case and snapping the lid shut before turning her full attention to him once more.

Grissom looked confused. "What do you mean?" he questioned in return.

"You get sent home early for a reason?"

He gave her a bemused shake of the head. "No, dear."

Sensing that any further explanation wasn't likely to be forthcoming, Sara prodded, "So--"

"Ana said she had a few things she wanted to take care of on her own before she came back," came his matter-of-fact reply.

Sara suspected that there had been more to it than that, but decided not to dwell on their boss's behavior, particularly when Grissom leaned in so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek as he said in all seriousness, and yet not, "I _do_ know how to play well with others."

She snickered slightly and gave him a swift kiss on the cheek before playfully wrinkling her nose and suggesting he go have a shower. Not because he desperately needed one, but because she knew the warm water would help with the soreness and that it was always a good idea to beat the rush before the others got back.

Of course, she didn't tell Grissom that.

So she wasn't surprised when he retreated a couple of steps and inquired, "That bad?"

Sara was having a hard time keeping her face serious when she said, "Not lemon worthy -- yet. Which is a good thing."

"No lemons?"

"In Costa Rica? Nope," she replied with a shake of the head. "And I'm not sure lime juice would work."

It was nice, this, being able to tease Grissom again, Sara thought, until she caught sight of the gleam in his eyes, that perilous sort of look that usually meant that trouble -- or an experiment -- was brewing.

As he turned to go, she called after him, "And I don't want to find out."

*******

Grissom emerged from the shower to find that Sara had packed up all of her specimens and was presently at work chopping fruit in the kitchen area. Just as he entered, the kettle on the camp stove let out an impatient whistle.

He chuckled, "Your timing is impeccable."

"No," Sara countered, then without missing a beat, deftly poured hot water into a pair of mugs as she replied, "You're just incredibly predictable when it comes to certain things."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "Take showers," she said, motioning to his wet hair. "They are never shorter than five minutes but no longer than ten, unless they are post de-comp ones or it's been a particularly difficult day.

"Besides, there was only enough water left in the shower you used for a short one," she added.

"Your powers of observation are impressive as always, my dear," he murmured in admiration.

She only grinned in response and indicated for him to sit. "You did remember to fill it back up?"

"Of course."

She placed the two mugs as well as a plate of fruit in the middle of the table, again apologizing for the lack of toast.

Grissom for his part, eyed the mug in front of him with a slight measure of wariness.

"It's just tea," she laughed, taking a seat across from him. "I thought the fruit was exotic enough for one afternoon."

He nodded in agreement and was just about to take a much welcomed and appreciated drink when Sara reached for a small tin already on the table and added a generous helping of a thick and creamy viscous suspension to her mug.

At his wide-eyed questioning look, she quickly explained, "It's just sweetened condensed milk."

"Another Tico specialty?"

"No. Indonesian," she supplied, giving her tea a thorough stir before taking a sip.

When he continued to appear puzzled, she added, "Bridget picked up the habit on a trip to an Orangutan sanctuary in Sumatra. I thought it was weird, too, but it turns out to be addictive."

She nudged the tin towards him but wasn't surprised when he declined. Grissom usually took his tea the same way he took his coffee -- black.

They sipped at their respective cups for a few minutes in a comfortable silence before Sara picked up a knife and resumed slicing.

Grissom inspected the fruit. "Actually I think I recognize most of them," he said.

"Star fruit," he began as if it were obvious -- as it was, since the cross-sections of the waxy, vibrantly yellow-green fruit had the five-pointed shape of a star.

"_Carambola_," Sara interjected in Spanish.

Grissom nodded, as if filing the word away for future reference, then continued, "Papaya," gesturing to the orange pulpy cubes to which some of the round black seeds still clung.

"You can go ahead and eat it, seeds and all," Sara said. "Came as a surprise to me. They taste a bit like pepper," she added in the same way people often said something tasted like chicken.

Grissom who hadn't known that about papaya seeds either, nibbled experimentally at one to find that it really did.

Finishing up the rest of the papaya, he watched Sara slice neat rows along a ripe mango before pulling the skin off the back. As he went to reach for a piece, however, she batted his hand aside and when he looked rather affronted, told him that she wasn't done yet and proceeded to squeeze lime juice over the slices before adding a dusting of reddish powder.

Before he could ask, she said, "Chili and yes, this is a Tico specialty."

Grissom smiled. It was a nice change this, he mused. Sara, instead of him, being the fount of knowledge. And Grissom had always found knowledge, even that of the more esoteric sort, terribly seductive.

He readily hazarded a bite and was pleasantly intrigued by the way the fruit was both sweet and sour; savory and spicy all at once.

"But," he said, pointing to the last of the remaining fruits, a small pear-shaped one with a deep reddish skin, "that one I don't recognize."

"Try it," she urged.

He did. And had to consider the taste for a moment. It didn't have a fruity flavor as such, nor was it sweet like the star fruit had been or tart in the way cherries and lemons typically were. If he had to describe it, he would have said the juicy fruit tasted the way he imagined a flower might.

"What is it?" he asked, before indulging in a larger bite.

"It's only ever found in Costa Rica so there isn't an actual term for it in English. It's a _manzana de agua _which loosely translates as --"

"_Water apple_," Grissom finished.

She nodded. "Although I'm not sure why," she admitted.

"Sometimes 'ours is not to reason why,'" Grissom intoned serenely.

Sara asked with a laugh, "What is it with you and Tennyson?"

He merely smiled and shrugged in response and set about finishing up his fruit.

She was just about to consume the last of her tea, when Sara realized that Grissom had for the last few minutes, been observing her in that quiet, yet intent way he often did when he was considering something.

"What?"

"It's nothing like I pictured it," Grissom replied casually.

"What isn't?"

"You, here in the forest," he said. "It's nothing like I pictured it."

She sniffed, not sure whether she should feel piqued or not. "You make it sound as if the notion was absurd."

He hurriedly shook his head. "Not in the least," he protested. Then both his expression and tone softened. "This place -- it suits you."

At the genuine nature of his compliment, Sara gave him a wide, unconstrained grin.

"It has its moments," she admitted.

"I can imagine."

She reached out, closed a hand over the one of his that rested on the tabletop. "You don't seem to be settling in too badly yourself," she observed.

He returned her smile and gave her hand a gentle squeeze in reply.

"I like the new look," Sara continued, indicating his change of wardrobe, the khaki-colored pants and camp shirt similar to the one he had worn the day before. "And while it is still strange to see you without a jacket, that hat of yours is just as endearing as I remember it."

"What," he asked both amused and incredulous, "do you have against my hat?"

"Nothing," she laughed. "Nothing at all. It suits you. In a very peculiar and unexpected way. But then," she continued, leaning in to caress his cheek, "things are often peculiar and unexpected when it comes to you."

Grissom protested, "There is nothing _peculiar_ about my hat."

"Of course not," she conceded. "And you've had it forever. By the way, how long is that exactly?"

Having paused to consider his response for a moment, he replied in all seriousness, "Since before you were ten."

Sara had to choke back a snicker, so perhaps it was a good thing that their conversation was abruptly interrupted by a loud screech.

Grissom's head shot up.

"It's just George," she said airily.

"George?" he echoed.

"Capuchin," explained Sara. "The animals around here haven't learned to fear people and the primates in particular tend to be... friendly. Easily lured and sometimes very hard to get rid of. Come on," she said, tugging Grissom to his feet and together, they quietly tiptoed to the small clearing in front of the main tent. George, the white-headed capuchin, was scurrying across the clothesline.

"You have to be careful what you leave out when he is around," Sara whispered. "Otherwise it might not be there when you come back. And while he seems to be mostly interested in food, apparently he also has a sock fetish.

"What he does with them once he finds them, we have no clue. Ana's joked about radio collaring him like Bridget does some of her Howlers, but sadly there just aren't the resources for idle curiosity."

That afternoon, George didn't really seem all that much in the mood for indulging in idle curiosity himself either. Sensing Grissom and Sara's presence, he scampered back up a tree and was more heard than seen.

As they moved to return to the kitchen area, Sara turned to Grissom and said, "You okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded.

"Your knee okay?" she pressed, knowing that his old injury had the tendency to flare up and plague him from time to time. When he appeared puzzled by her concern, she said, "You're limping more than usual."

"Just blisters," came his dismissive reply.

"Ah, those are easily remedied," Sara said and drew him back towards their tent.

Grissom, knowing better than to argue, let her do it without protest.

"We'll get you some thicker wool socks when we next go into town," she said as she was examining his feet. "I know it sounds hot, but they'll keep your feet drier and prevent chaffing."

She was murmuring about how all of the humidity had a tendency to soften the feet and make them prone to blisters, when she pulled from her trunk the last thing he expected -- a roll of duct tape, from which she cut several small pieces and began to affix them to the sores on his feet.

"Keeps the moisture out and the skin from rubbing any further," she replied offhandedly and then with a grin, "Scientist's tool of choice. I am starting to think that MacGyver might have been right about the stuff."

*******

Before long, everyone else began to stumble back into camp. Sara wasn't sure how the two young men had persuaded her to abandon her thesis for the whole day, but Bridget it seemed had joined Bernie and Luis on their customary Sunday jaunt to town. Stephen, too, must have met up with Ana at some point that afternoon as the two of them returned together, speaking in whispers about something Sara was pretty sure had nothing to do with field work.

This was, of course, her cue to finish up dinner preparations for the night.

As she retrieved the last of the ingredients from the chests they used to keep the animals and insects out, Grissom surveyed the pile and nonchalantly observed, "Still not handling raw meat, I see --"

She nodded and smiled ruefully. "Let's just say my day is not everyone else's favorite."

"Fair enough."

"But," she said eyeing him appreciatively, "they will love you."

"Why do you say that?"

Sara laughed. "Because you're the only one out of the seven of us who actually knows how to cook."

"You seem to be doing just fine," Grissom countered.

She cocked her head and said, "Is there something you want, Gilbert?"

"What do you mean?"

"You don't often stoop to flattery," she explained, wiping her hands on a towel.

Grissom considered her question for a moment. Truth be told, there were a great many things he wanted, some of them things he was just starting to see as being possible again. He certainly wanted to see her smile at him like she was doing now far more often.

His voice was low, deep and earnest, almost intimate, when he said, "Just because I don't say certain things often enough, doesn't mean I don't realize or feel them."

"I see," Sara said with a nod as she could appreciate exactly how much it had cost him just to be able to say those words.

They stood there for what seemed a long time, simply enjoying the comfort of each other's presence, but it had probably been less than a minute before Grissom wiped his own hands and said, "So what would you like me to do? To help with dinner –" he hurriedly added for clarification.

"Didn't you just say that you didn't have a problem with my cooking?"

"I am fully capable of _taking_ direction, dear," he answered with a wry sort of grin.

Sara shrugged. "It's just usually you teaching me in the kitchen," she said by way of explanation

"Like you've said, some things change," Grissom replied. Then as if he were both eagerly and genuinely enjoying the prospect inquired, "So what's on the menu for dinner?"

Sara readily walked him through the recipes for the _sopa negra_ or black bean soup and stuffed bell peppers that she had planned to make, and they began to set to work in earnest and with little difficulty.

The two of them had spent so long working together that they knew and could easily anticipate each other's movements, so the simple act of preparing dinner really was simple, despite all the difficulties that camp cooking often entailed. Before long, the comfortable ease they had built up between them over the years returned and that afternoon became just any other ordinary day in the kitchen.

*******

After dinner, Sara excused herself to go have a shower before bed. When she returned to the tent the two of them shared, she discovered Grissom sitting on one of the cots, his nose firmly stuck in a book. It was a sight that did not in the least astound her.

That didn't mean she was above teasing him about it.

"Don't tell me you're hiding already?" she asked as she tucked her dirty clothes away.

He didn't bother to look up from his book. "I'm not and I don't," Grissom replied, even though he knew he did, and that Sara knew too of his tendency to retreat into his office (whether at home or at work) when there was something or someone -- or just life in general -- that he didn't want to have to deal with.

This however was not the case that evening, as Sara well knew. Besides, Bernie liked to listen to the radio at night, so it was certainly far quieter and therefore easier to be able to concentrate on one's reading from within the privacy of the tent.

She paused in her preparations for bed to rest a hand on his shoulder and lean in to see what he was reading.

"Ah, homework on your first day," she sighed with a conciliatory grin.

"Just catching up on my background reading."

She laughed. "And you always said _I _was the overeager one. You want to be left in peace?"

Grissom shook his head and gave her a slight, welcoming smile. "I could use the company," he said. Although when Sara pulled a novel from her trunk, he gave her choice of reading materials a curious glance.

"Not one word," she warned.

He merely continued to grin blithely, as if the thought hadn't even crossed his mind.

She plopped down beside him and just as they had as often as work had ever permitted in Vegas, the two of them began to read together in companionable silence.

After a while, Sara shifted positions so that she could better snuggle into his side, though it wasn't long before she gave up any pretext of appearing to read.

"Bed?" Grissom suggested.

She shook her head and insisted that he keep reading before resting her head in his lap. She closed her eyes and was soon asleep.

Remembering how he had probably kept Sara up long past her usual bedtime the night before and then proceeded to keep her awake for additional time during the night, he wasn't surprised that she was tired.

For a while, he watched her doze, then slowly brushed the still damp hair that had fallen over her face back behind her ear. Sara stirred slightly, but did not wake. So Grissom reached over to lower the lamp light until it just spilled bright enough to light the pages he was reading, and with one hand proceeded to gently smooth her curls and lazily caress her back, only breaking contact long enough to turn the pages.

From Bernie's radio came the sound of ecstatic cheering that usually accompanied one futbol team or another scoring a goal. It added another line to the complex melody of the forest. But the sounds were already beginning to lose much of their strangeness.

To Grissom, it felt so wonderfully surreal and familiar all at once.

Not too much later, realizing just how tired he was himself, Grissom drew back the sheets and eased Sara beneath them, before quietly changing into something better suited for sleeping and joining her.

She had rolled over onto her left side, so he drew himself alongside her and was gratified to find that her body still seemed to instinctively settle into his.

He pressed a smile into her skin when she murmured, he knew more asleep than awake, "Goodnight, Gil."

And like her, he was soon fast asleep.


	8. Eight: An Interlude on Insects

**Eight: One (Not So Brief) Interlude on Insects**

Although it was still dark outside when Grissom woke the next morning, he found the space on the cot beside him empty and cold to the touch. He sighed and rolled over to reach for his watch.

He blinked at it bleary-eyed for a minute before the numbers finally resolved into focus. They confirmed what he already suspected. It was just past five and Sara was up and probably hard at work already.

Some things it seemed never did change.

He dressed quickly and when he did step out into the dimness discovered that Sara was indeed busy with her specimens. He was heartened however that it didn't appear as if she had been at it very long.

"Good morning," he whispered, placing a long lingering kiss into her hair.

"Hey," she replied and remembering the mishap of the day before carefully set the beetle she was in the middle of processing aside.

He rested a hand on her shoulder. It stayed there while he leaned in to get a better look at what she had been working on. "Is this what is always getting you out of bed so early?" he asked, peering curiously at the boxes in front of her.

She shook her head. "No, that's your snoring." And as it became apparent that Grissom wasn't going to rise to the bait, she added, her eyes bright with mischief, "If you are going to make a habit of sneaking up on people, we might have to seriously consider making you wear a bell."

"I don't sneak," maintained Grissom.

"Right."

When he returned his attention to the series of freshly labeled specimens, Sara said, "However, you were right about that entomology textbook of yours coming in handy."

She could see his lips twitch into a ghost of a grin, but he only continued in his examination.

"Well?" she asked after a while. Although she should have known better than to expect any sort of cogent response from him when there were bugs around.

His vaguely muttered, "Hmm?" only served to reinforce that fact.

"How am I doing?" There was a faint hint of insecurity in her voice, one that hadn't been there for a long time, at least not when it came to things of a professional rather than personal nature. But as bugs were Grissom's specialty and she was in many ways still really just starting out, Sara valued his expert opinion.

"Good," he replied. "Really good."

"Don't sound so surprised," Sara quipped uneasily.

"I'm not," he said. "I was just thinking you really don't need me around here."

Sara sighed, "I think you more than just a little overestimate my abilities, Gil."

"Hardly," he countered. "And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Ana had nothing but praise for your skills. Said you had the best eye for detail that she's ever seen."

"Yeah, well it seems that all those years of practice looking for hair, fiber and trace evidence come in handy for something else too."

"She also said your field notes and sketches were legendary."

"For their bad handwriting," laughed Sara.

"Well, that too," Grissom conceded. Then in all seriousness he added, "It really is good -- all the work you've done here."

"I can't take all the credit," she replied. "I've had a really good teacher."

"Oh?"

Sara nodded. "Yes. Very thorough. And no, not the least bit dull."

She saw him smile both at the compliment and the reference.

"I have, too."

This response came as a bit of a surprise to Sara. "I knew Gerard was a pioneer in a number of forensic disciplines," she said. "But I didn't know he did bugs, too."

"He doesn't. But I wasn't talking about bugs."

Their eyes met; Sara's widened as she realized what he was intimating, and like it so often happened when it came to Grissom's earnest pronouncements, found that she could not think of a reply -- any reply at all really. So she merely gaped at him for moment.

"I still have a lot to learn," he admitted softly, brushing a curl back behind her ear as he said it.

"So do I," she said with a slight smile. "And yes, we really do need you around here.

"Like yesterday. That _Canthidium_ specimen. You knew exactly what it was in less than ten seconds, while I had been pouring over that thing for ten minutes."

"That's easy enough to explain," Grissom offered. "Do you have it handy?"

Sara retrieved the appropriate box from the day before. Using the long metal forceps, Grissom gently withdrew the tiny dung beetle.

"There are more than twenty recorded Canthon species indigenous to Costa Rica and probably several more that have yet to be discovered. Sadly, a lot of them look alike."

"Yeah, I hadn't noticed."

"Well, people probably all look the same to insects."

Sara wasn't entirely sure that was true. It was more likely that the insects couldn't even be bothered to give humans a second glance. Her experience out in the field was that when it came to most bugs -- or at least the ones that weren't interested in using you as a food source -- they tended to regard people as something at least -- if not more -- inconsequential than rocks.

Grissom held the specimen beneath the desktop magnifier. "Take a look at the tip of its head. See how the edge is serrated so it looks almost like a series of teeth?"

She squinted. "Yeah."

"The principle distinguishing feature of _Canthidium variolosum_ is that there are always four of those teeth-like projections."

Sara sighed in bemusement, "So in this case, the devil really is in the details."

He nodded. "Especially with beetles."

"And there are a lot of beetles," she replied.

"More than eight million species of them. Which means that Haldane was probably right."

"J.B.S. Haldane, one of the fathers of population genetics Haldane?"

He gave her another nod. "He once said -- probably more tongue-in-cheek than not -- that if the natural world said anything about the nature of a divine creator, it must be that God had 'an inordinate fondness for beetles.'"

Sara chuckled and familiar with Haldane's rather atheistic views on religion and the universe said, "Then Shaw must also have been right -- 'All great truths begin as blasphemies.'"

Grissom grinned, then gesturing to the specimens on the table said, "Ana only gave me the highlights yesterday. Can you walk me through the actual protocols?"

"Here? Now?" Sara asked.

He shrugged. "Why not? I mean if you have the time. Or would you rather not have company at the moment?" he said, echoing her words from the night before when she had found him busy reading.

Seeing that he was as serious as he ever was, Sara scooted over to make room for him on the bench and motioned for him to join her.

"First," she began, "You have to understand that most of what I know is limited to insects and other arthropods, so if you want to know about the botanical side of things you are going to have to talk to Ana or Stephen."

Grissom, accepting the caveat, indicated for her to continue.

"As you probably already know, much of the data scientists currently have on tropical rain forests is incredibly incomplete. Even when it comes to something as seemingly simple as knowing which species can be found where. Particularly when it comes to invertebrates, as most studies have focused on the populations of higher orders like mammals and birds."

"Ah, the charismatic mega-vertebrates --" Grissom supplied, his tone rife with the same sort of disdain as one used to utter a dirty word.

"Yeah. The sexier side of conservation biology I guess."

"Ah, if they only knew," Grissom said with a knowing sort of grin.

To which Sara gave him a curious raise of the eyebrows.

"Let's just say that by human standards there is nothing conventional about the reproductive habits of plants," he replied. "The allure of the bright flowers. The false pretenses. Bribery. Rampant promiscuity. Cross-kingdom ménage à trios --"

"The scandal --" Sara cried in mock horror. "And yet," she said gesturing to the fauna around them, "they all look so innocent."

"There is nothing innocent about flowers," he countered. "Despite what all the poets say."

"When you put it that way," she conceded before returning to her explanation. "As it is hard to see which species are being affected or lost because of climate and change or habitat loss if you have no idea what plants and animals were there in the first place, what Ana and Stephen as well as other researchers in various sites throughout the country are trying to do is to come up with a sort of master list of species -- of all the species -- that make their homes within the various biomes."

"Sort of like a species census."

"Yes, all linked to detailed habitat maps," Sara replied. "But this requires an almost constant state of sampling. Species migrate based on weather, the food on hand and availability of suitable mates. And with insects it is even more complicated."

"Because of the huge lifestyle differences between immature stages and adults."

"Right," Sara nodded. "Besides, the sheer volume of insect species is mind blowing. A single square mile of rainforest here can be home to thousands of species of arthropods."

"You should be happy that they've narrowed the definition of _insect _over the centuries," said Grissom. "In the 1600's the term not only covered what we typically consider insects today, but also worms, slugs, frogs and even crocodiles."

She shook her head in incredulity. "Okay, the worms and slugs I can vaguely understand, but crocodiles?"

"Sometimes even science is more of an art than an exact science."

"True," she agreed, then said, "At first, I wondered what difference something as simple as identifying plants and collecting beetles could make. But you have to start somewhere. And having and knowing the names are that first step."

She then began to explain that while Ana's specialty had always been tropical botany, it hadn't taken her very long to recognize the importance of having a bug specialist on site. However, Sara hadn't had a chance to meet the previous entomologist-in-residence, as the young post-doc had returned to the states in late October to give birth to her first child.

As this had left the station one bug person short, Sara tried to help out as much as she could. And while having worked and practically lived with a highly respected entomologist hadn't hurt, and everything she had picked up from all the subsequent reading she had done after Grissom had given her that entomology textbook for Christmas several years back had proven useful, she was no expert by any means. Definitely not the way he was.

So she was certain that she wasn't the least bit exaggerating when she told Grissom, "Ana must have been ecstatic to hear that you wanted to come."

He smiled at this, but only waited for her to continue with her explanations.

Bernie and Luis, the camp's local resident parataxonimists, had received a six month course specializing in taxonomy and were ostensibly responsible for collecting, sorting, cleaning and identifying the specimens, but mostly they handled much of the grunt and dirty work and never seemed to complain, at least not in any English or Spanish Sara could recognize. That didn't mean they were exactly crazy about having dung-duty though.

When Grissom asked, "Horse, pig or human?" Sara knew he was inquiring about the source of the bait that they used to attract coprophagous insects.

"Human," she supplied.

"That gives a whole new meaning to the phrase _waste not want not_," he quipped. "So how did you get to be exempt?"

"Apparently, chivalry is not dead," Sara replied. "Or perhaps it is just machismo. I don't know."

"But you aren't complaining."

"Not very loudly, no."

"So what exactly do _you_ do then?" he asked.

She explained how she had spent her first week becoming acclimated to the heat and humidity, visiting the various research plots to familiarize herself with the environs and microhabitats and learning everything she could about the survey, collection and analysis protocols the study operated under before transitioning into the actual field rotation.

Over time though much of the archival work had fallen to her. Sara didn't really mind. The two young men knew and understood the forest far better than she probably ever could or would, and after all the years she had spent as a CSI, she was very adept at analysis. So more often than not, she spent the pre-dawn hours when everyone else was still asleep working on keeping up with the specimens that had been gathered the day or days before. Then once chores and breakfast were attended to, she went out with the young men to set and retrieve traps and do various other sample and data collection. In the afternoon, she returned back to camp to set to work on sorting, cleaning and preparing the specimens. As there could frequently be more than 100 new ones to go through everyday, the whole process kept her very and pleasantly occupied.

And since she was now in charge of most of the cataloging, that not only allowed for an increase in the number of samples the station could handle at any one time, but the arrangement also frequently freed up one of the guys to help Ana and Stephen with their plant surveys and habitat maps.

For the most part, obtaining terrestrial specimens hadn't proven too difficult. The arboreal ones required a bit more creativity and some climbing on the part of the Luis and Bernie. But Sara admitted they were still slightly stymied in trying to figure out the best way to trap the insects that were primarily of the aerial sort.

When she presented this problem to Grissom, he merely said, "Got any rum?"

"Thinking about making daiquiris?" she laughed.

"No, dear. For sugaring."

"_Sugaring_?" Sara queried, unfamiliar with the term.

"Old lepidopterist trick," he explained. "Add four pounds of sugar to one bottle of stale beer and add a dash of rum. Paint it on trees and it will lure your daytime fliers."

"And it makes them easier to catch because they're drunk?"

Grissom's brow furrowed. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said, but she could tell his mind was seriously contemplating the possibility. Although he seemed to shelve it for future consideration for he next said, "As for nighttime insects, can you get a hold of a black light?"

"Like the ones we used to use for ALS?"

"Yeah, but bigger if you can find them. Then you just need a white sheet, some rope and a couple of trees in a fairly exposed space, like the side of a hill, and a night that is fairly still and moonless. Considering how late the moon seems to rise around here, it should be a simple prospect."

Unsurprisingly impressed at the ease of his suggestion, Sara said, "I'll mention it to Ana. Unless you want to."

"No, go ahead," he urged her.

For while Grissom was ostensibly the bug expert, he wasn't the boss here and had no desire to be and so was more than content to be just another member of the team.

He was enjoying, too, the fact that in many ways, he and Sara had reversed roles when it came to work, with him as the student and her as the mentor.

Yes, he found the whole thing to be yet another change that he was thoroughly appreciating.

When she had quickly glossed over the preservation and archival protocols, most of which were standard operating procedures that any entomologist would know, Grissom leaned back and let out a genuinely impressed sigh.

But there wasn't time really for his praise to go to Sara's head, as there was still work to be done that morning. Several specimens from the days previous had yet to be prepped. Sara moved to set to work on it, intending for Grissom, who insisted on helping, to get started on identifications, but he insisted on undertaking the less glamourous jobs of cleaning and preserving specimens.

It seemed that Grissom had taken to heart what had really been light-hearted teasing when Sara had earlier told him not to "think just because you have the title _doctor_ in front of your name that you are exempt from the grunt work."

Or perhaps he just enjoyed being able to work with his hands again. It didn't really matter.

Of course that didn't keep him from being curious and pausing every now and then to take a closer look at several of the more unusual insects that had been collected.

Sara soon found that by shifting slightly to her right, she could watch him out of the corner of her eye. Not because she wanted to ensure he was doing things properly, for she knew right well there was no need for that, but more to be able to better appreciate the way his spectacles would slip down his sweaty nose or the way that his eyes and face set in concentration as he worked.

Before long, it felt almost as if Grissom had always been there. That this wasn't the first morning they spent working together like this, even though it was.

They had been quietly occupied for a while, when Grissom put down the specimen he was working on, turned to Sara and said without preamble or pause, "I love you."

At which Sara started in surprise.

He gave her a perplexed look in reply and asked, "Why does that always seem to come as such a surprise?"

She thought for a moment about this. "Because it is," she said, "a surprise," and gave him an uneasy sort of smile. "I guess I have just never gotten used to it."

"I know I may not say it often enough, but --"

"That's not what I mean," Sara interjected. "Gil, You have to understand that when I was growing up, it just wasn't something that was ever said, even if it had ever been felt, and I'm not really sure it was.

"And with you... I mean I know it's true. After all these years, I do. But still --"

"Sara," he began, drawing out the two syllables of her name with much tenderness. He took her hand in his and ran his thumb over her knuckles. "Honey, I know I never did say it enough, showed it enough. And I should have. Everyday. But I do. I love you.

"You may think that science or bugs have been the love of my life, but it's you. It's always been you."


	9. Nine: The Nightmares that Come

**Nine: The Nightmares that Come from Good Intentions**

Sara stirred to wake with Grissom's arm around her and his face buried in the nape of her neck. She smiled contentedly at this, until she realized his grasp was more tight than tender; his shoulders taught and shaking slightly. And suddenly she didn't feel quite so warm, satisfied or sleepy.

She slid her fingers through his and murmured, "Gil?" and when there was no reply, said, "_Honey_?"

"Go back to sleep," he whispered. "It was… It was just a bad dream," he eventually stammered before rolling away from her.

Although it hadn't been just _a bad dream_. It had been much worse than that, but Grissom didn't want to trouble her with it, not here and now. And honestly, he didn't want to deal with it at the moment either.

He just wanted to be able to breathe again.

But Sara, having both used that exact excuse herself on more than one occasion, and been far too familiar with the clammy skin, patches of sweat and racing pulse, knew better than to believe him. She also knew not to press. So she merely watched in quiet concern as he attempted to extricate himself from the blankets and wasn't surprised when that usually simple action turned out to not be so simple.

With his shaky feet finally flat on the floor, Grissom exhaled and finally hazarded to peer down at his empty hands. He was at once relieved to find them merely sweaty and not as he had just dreamt, or so often remembered, covered with blood. Still, he hurriedly wiped them on his cotton pants, trying hard to breathe past the memories so recently vividly reincarnated into dreams. How hot, sticky and glossily brilliant the fresh blood was. How hard the wet concrete had been beneath his knees. How the chill descended upon him as he felt the life leave Warrick's body and he could do nothing but cradle him in his arms.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there willing his breath to return to normal or precisely how he could over the thundering of his heart in his chest even hear the light rustle of sheets as Sara slipped from the bed or make out the sounds of her soft footfalls that stopped directly in front of him. He knew though, that she was real, perhaps the only real thing, so he leaned forward to rest his head on her stomach, buried his face into the soft fabric of her t-shirt and held her hard.

From the way his shoulders were shaking, Sara knew he was crying, something she had only ever seen Grissom do a handful of times in all the years she'd known him. But she didn't move to stop him, she simply smoothed his hair and hugged him in return and let him. For she doubted if he'd really cried since that afternoon after Warrick's funeral.

She didn't really want to think about that day, remember it and immediately tried to as she had long had put it out of her mind, for while having to face the reality of loosing Warrick like that had been heartbreaking enough, to see Grissom like he was that day, it had been beyond devastating. The break in his voice. The stiffness. The aching vacancy that seemed to lie behind his eyes that she hadn't seen there since Nick had been taken. How he haunted his townhouse in the same way as he had right after she had returned from the hospital: unable to eat or sleep or settle on anything for very long. Part of her had wished he had been angry like he had been when Greg had been beaten. Of the wistful pensiveness he had displayed after Brass had been shot, there had been no sign. There had been it seemed with little hope of relief, release or comfort, just the agony of absolute loss and the knowing that what was gone could never be found again.

When they had returned to his place that afternoon, Sara had drawn him over the threshold of his apartment, quietly closed the door behind them both and carefully folded him up in her arms. He had finally broken down then and sobbed as she gently rocked him, unable to keep her own tears from streaming down her cheeks. They had stayed like that for a long while until the exhaustion of the last several days overcame the two of them and they collapsed into the fitful sleep of the grieved.

Tonight, she waited for him to still before she knelt, took his face into her hands and rubbing her thumbs along the skin just above his beard, searched his face.

However tempting it might have been, she didn't tell him that everything was _going to be okay_. In all the time they had known each other, Grissom had never stooped to saying such vapid and banal things to her and Sara was not about to start.

It took him a while to meet her gaze but when he did, she glimpsed relief rather than chagrin or heartache there.

Grissom let out a long, deep breath that contained her name as he leaned his head against hers to better breathe in deep the reassuring presence of her.

When she reached down to take them in hers, his hands were still damp with sweat and as cold as ice so Sara brought them up to her mouth to blow warmth back into them again, but before long, they slid around her cheeks and he kissed her, his lips soft, warm and tasting of tears.

She could feel him finally begin to relax, his breathing begin to slow again. And when he pulled away, he chanced a soft smile as if to indicate that he was okay, even if they both knew better. Sara nodded in agreement anyway.

Judging from the way that thin strip of moonlight was insistently threading its way between the tent flaps, it had to be long past three, and as Sara was typically awake around five, she didn't see much point in either of them attempting to go back to bed. Besides, there was just something about nightmares that always seemed to make even the mere prospect of sleep seem rather repugnant, no matter how little real rest had preceded it.

So after a while, Sara gently disengaged herself from him and whispered that she would be right back and that he should get his jacket and put on his boots.

She was as good as her word, and returned less than five minutes later, a thermos in hand.

"Not warm milk," she said, seeing the wary way Grissom was eying it. "Come on," she urged, tugging him toward the tent entrance, having hurriedly slipped on her own jacket and boots.

She knew just the place to go after bad dreams.

Even with just the faint illumination of her lantern (the canopy overhead obscured much of the moonlight), Grissom recognized the path they were on as the one leading towards the small river where they went to fetch water throughout the day.

But it was far different a place at night, for the bit of open sky above made the water seem to ripple and dance with a silvery glow.

"Sit with me," Sara whispered, motioning to a pair of large boulders near the water's edge. He did.

She followed his gaze skyward. "It's beautiful. But sad, too," she whispered, admiring the waning gibbous moon. "Like half of it is missing." Then with a weary sort of smile she said, "I know that feeling."

Grissom did too.

Sara pulled a bandana from a jacket pocket, dipped it into the water before wringing out the excess and draping it over the back of Grissom's neck. Despite the bone-deep chill still left over from his dream, the cool of the water felt wonderfully refreshing. She let him simply savor the sensation for a few minutes before handing him a steaming cup.

"It's just tea," she said and left him to sip quietly at it before she said, "You haven't been sleeping well," with all the understanding of a person far too used to both insomnia and the horrors of nightmares.

He gave her a half smile. "Better since I decided to come."

Sara seemed to consider her next question for a while. "Worse than after Warrick --" she started, but her voice got caught and she couldn't quite get out the word _died_.

He nodded as did Sara.

Those had been bad enough, she knew. That they had been even worse after she had left, she gulped at the thought, and then at the fact that she had left, hadn't been there for him, especially after all those times he had been for her.

"Gil --" Sara began. "Gil, I'm so sorry."

Grissom, seeming to sense that her words weren't merely ones of commiseration, but rather a genuine expression of regret, made no reply but to nod.

"I -- I thought I was doing the right thing," she eventually stammered. "I really did. The first time, I just didn't want to put you through having to watch me self-destruct again."

This Grissom certainly understood. In many ways, he had done the exact same thing with her.

"And I thought I could do it -- handle it -- on my own," she was saying. "I mean I've spent my whole life fighting my battles on my own that I didn't even think to ask for help.

"I thought if I went away, I could fix it. Or at least begin to figure out how to fix it. Fix me.

"But there are just some things you _can't_ fix.

"More often than not, once someone – _something_," she hurriedly corrected, "is broken, it never goes back together again. You can't make it whole. It will always be broken."

"Sara," he said softly. She shook her head as if to say she wanted to finish, to get all the words and the hurt out.

"I tried for so long to do that, to try and put the fragments back together into some semblance of a real life. And for a while, I really thought I had. But then everything began to unravel all over again and the damn pieces just wouldn't fit --"

"'_And all the king's horses and all the king's men..._'" Grissom intoned quietly.

"Yeah. And I didn't know what to do," she confessed. "All I knew was that I just couldn't put you through that. For we saw enough sadness and grief and heartache at work. The kits and the latex gloves, the procedures and the science, they help distance us from that horror. But it's still always there.

"And I didn't want you to have to deal with all that at home, too, not when there were so many more important things going on."

She paused, needing the breath, needing a moment before she continued.

"Then for a long time, I didn't know if I could come back, to you, to CSI. If I even deserved to come back. So much time had passed.

"And then Warrick…" and she was at last able to get the word out, "died. And once I was back in Vegas again, I realized I hadn't really fixed anything -- anything at all.

"And it hurt. It hurt to see you hurting like you were then and not to be able to do one damn thing about it.

"Gil, I -- I just couldn't -- couldn't watch you rebuild all those walls again because it just hurt so much for you to feel anything anymore.

"It was just too much and too easy to get pulled back into that life of living for the dead again," she said, the frustration evident in her voice.

She met his eyes and grasped his hand hard. "I just wanted to get you away, away for a little while, before the light went completely out of your eyes."

Grissom returned the pressure and her gaze, but made no reply.

"Then you turned out to be right about Tom Adler. About all of it. The case. The need to stick to the science. To not let my emotions get too involved. To not let the case poison my own life and I didn't listen.

"And I couldn't face you after that," she confessed. "Because if you were right about him needing her to leave him, then perhaps you were right about the rest of it, too. That you really did mean to say that I had to be the one to go because you couldn't.

"And that was what you really wanted."

Grissom's voice was faint, almost forlorn when he said, "It wasn't."

"So while you ran to work, I ran away," she finished.

"It didn't work," Grissom replied. "And it didn't help."

"No, it didn't," she quietly concurred.

"But I thought," he said slightly perplexed, "I thought you were happy."

Sara thought back on the flush and rush of those first few weeks after she had left Vegas. It had been easy for her to be happy far from all the things that made her ache and want to rage and roar. Easy to begin to breathe again. Easy to be lost in the here and now and not in the then and there. Easy to be swept up in the wonder of it all, in all the glory and beauty around her. Easy to be lost and not have to worry about being found.

Yes, it had felt like happiness, an almost intoxicating sort of euphoria. But that sort of satisfaction she was soon to find wasn't permanent. It was a bit like trying to grasp water in your cupped hands. No matter how tight she tried to hold on to it, it still trickled through her fingers.

"No," she reluctantly admitted, although at least she knew the admission was honest. Suddenly, her tone turned insistent, "I didn't want you to worry. It would have just made it all worse."

Grissom nodded, remembering that she had once said as much to him before, right before she left, when he had stopped by PD to make sure she was okay because he had been worried and seriously so. The thing was, receiving her message hadn't made him worry any less.

"I wanted you to know," continued Sara, "I needed you to know it was okay. Okay if you -- if you --"

"Needed to walk away?" he finished.

"Or wanted to."

"But what did _you_ want?" Grissom asked.

Sara gave a sad sort of shrug, before saying, "The same thing you did: more than just to know I wasn't alone."

He gave this a sorrowful nod, having himself both feared and believed that she had misunderstood what he had meant when he said those words. He had wanted her. To be with her, not just for days or weeks or months. He wanted, he supposed, everything. He just hadn't been willing or able to do anything to get it.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it, about going away with her. He had. For months really. Not that there was any way for her to have known that. He had never said as much to her before.

"That night Warrick was shot," he said. "Just before, we'd all been having breakfast together. You know like we used to."

Sara did. He had mentioned as much at Warrick's funeral.

"I think that was the last moment of contentment I had for a very long time. But in that moment, it felt like everything was the way it was supposed to be. Finally back to normal. Well, as normal as things ever were or could be with you away.

"On the way back to the car, I stopped by the newsstand, not on purpose, but the latest copy of _National Geographic Traveler_ had caught my eye. Since before April, I'd been thinking about getting away for a while, going away with you, as we've still never really had a vacation together," he said with a soft smile. "It finally felt like the perfect time to do it.

"And then --"

Sara knew all too well what happened then.

"And I just couldn't," he confessed. "I just couldn't do it."

For a long moment, his words hung there between them as they always had, before she gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. In part, she understood, she did, while part of her she knew never could or would.

Grissom glanced down at their hands before saying, "I saw Natalie a few months ago. At her transfer hearing," he explained. "All I could do the whole time was wonder if it was possible -- if it was really possible for people who are damaged to change.

"But I wasn't thinking about Natalie -- or you -- but myself.

"I guess I wanted to know if I could change. If I could…." But the rest seemed to get stuck in his throat.

Sara reached up to lightly caress his cheek as she simply waited for him to continue in his own time.

But he couldn't quite say, _If I could change and be able to leave the past, my past and all the patterns -- the ones that have for so long both sheltered and imprisoned me -- behind_.

Instead, Grissom took a deep breath and said, his voice laden with regret, "Heather was right. It was time to stop and live my own life for once," and then as if he thought his abrupt mention of Heather Kessler needed further explanation added, "I went to see her."

"I hope it was a social call and not a professional one," Sara replied.

"Both and neither," he offered, slightly caught off guard by the casualness of her response. A part of him had thought, almost expected her to question his actions, perhaps even be upset that he had gone to see Heather, but Sara looked more understanding that anything.

She seemed to register his surprise, for she said with a slight shake of the head, "I'm not always irrationally jealous, Gilbert."

Which earned her a hint of a bemused grin from him.

"She is your friend," continued Sara. "Why wouldn't you go see her?"

"After I got your message," Grissom began and her smile swiftly vanished. "Honey, I honestly didn't know, know what to do or think or even feel. I needed…"

"Someone to talk to. Someone outside that you trusted," she finished.

"Yes," he replied and then as if he didn't want there to be any misunderstanding between them, Grissom said, "Nothing happened."

"I know."

Sara knew better than to believe otherwise. Nothing had happened the last time either. Even then, it wasn't that he had spent the night with Heather Kessler that had really bothered her. It had been that she had had to hear about the whole thing from Catherine and not from him.

Grissom, remembering as much himself added, "She's not my secret, Sara."

"I didn't think as much," she replied. When he continued to look surprised, Sara said, "Gil, if you had wanted to be with her, you wouldn't be here right now."

He nodded in agreement.

"I'm glad," she continued, "she was there," and he could tell that she genuinely meant it.

"She's a licensed therapist now," he said.

Sara chuckled. "Now that doesn't surprise me."

Grissom smiled in reply before saying. "But she was right," he said, "_You _were right. _Not making a decision was making a decision_.

"At first, I thought you were telling me that I had already made the wrong decision. That it was too late. But what you were telling me was that I still had a choice. If I just had the courage to make it, I could still choose to live my own life, to let myself have my own life.

"It just took a while for the words -- for what they really meant -- to sink in."

"When I never heard back from you," Sara murmured, "I was afraid that I would never see you again."

"Honey, I wanted to write," he whispered. "I did. I tried. I just couldn't find the words.

"That's when I knew I had to come."

"You know I wasn't asking you --"

"I know," he replied. "But it was time to make a decision. I chose to go with the living -- for once," he said with a self-deprecating sort of smile, which she returned. He reached out, brushed a stray curl back behind her ear. His voice turned soft, tender, "You know, my mother was right, too. I always was a moron and a coward and a fool when it came to you."

"So you keep telling me."

But Grissom's face soon turned somber again. "We never did talk about it," he said. "Those hours in the desert and after.

"Sara, when we found you, I was so relieved that you were alive, too happy to still have you, that I didn't want to dwell on how close I really came to losing you out there.

"And I didn't stop to think about the afterwards. As long as you were there beside me, I could imagine that once your arm and all the scrapes and scratches and bruises healed, that would be the end of it. We could go on as if nothing had happened, as if Natalie had never happened.

"But it had. She had. And try as I might to ignore them, things were different.

"I tried to pretend that there wasn't a problem with us being on separate shifts with separate days off. I thought the hints of sadness and distance I would glimpse from you from time to time were you having problems adjusting to the new shift, to the new schedule, to the new responsibilities with Ronnie. That those were the things frustrating you, keeping you awake.

"And I didn't realize that during the times we were together, we were both trying so hard to make the most of it, so neither of us talked about empty beds and loneliness or the pain and nightmares.

"So I just kept acting as if things weren't any different in hopes that they wouldn't be. But Aldus Huxley had it right: _'facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.'"_

Sara nodded sadly.

"And then you were just gone," Grissom continued. "And even then I guess I thought you'd come back. You'd go away for a little while and then you'd come back."

"Like you did," Sara supplied.

"Yes," he said. "And then everything could go back to being the way it was. What I didn't realize was that there could be a time when you just couldn't come back."

"It wasn't because of you."

"I know."

"I thought they would go away, too," Sara said. "That overwhelming sense of futility, the frustration, fatigue. I thought eventually they would go away and things would return back to normal.

"They didn't."

"I know," he said. "I really do. The last few months. The work. The cases. Honestly, they sucked. But, Sara, nothing was as hard as going home and having to face the fact that you were gone and weren't coming back.

"I couldn't do it either. Not any more. Not without you."

Suddenly, Sara found she needed to wipe the wetness from her cheeks, but Grissom pulled her hands away and kissed her.

In a wistful sort of voice he whispered, "I really should have taken Catherine's advice."

As this was the first Sara had heard about it, she simply waited for him to go on.

"Last year, that week after you left, she told me I should take some vacation time and go after you," he said.

"Why didn't you?"

"I guess I was trying to do..."

"The right thing?"

Grissom nodded. "I didn't think that was what you wanted. And I wanted -- I wanted you to be happy."

"Gil --" Sara sighed.

"Then when I got your email, I guess it felt like that old adage -- _be careful what you wish for_. I wanted you to be happy. I really did. But I guess what I really wanted was for you to be happy with me.

"It took me that year to figure out that you never did tell me you never wanted me to come."

"Why is it," she began both bemused and rueful all at once, "that every time we try to do the right thing, it ends up being the wrong one?"

"You know what they say about good intentions," he replied.

"I know the road to hell is paved with them."

"Yeah," he agreed and then pensively asked, "Which is worse I wonder: the good intentions that we have and then don't do, or the ones we have and actually do?" As there didn't seem to be reply to this nor was it, it seemed required, he went on to question in a lighter, curious tone, "What is the road to heaven paved with then?"

"No clue," Sara replied, shrugging her shoulders. "I leave philosophy to those highly intellectual guys like you. But," she said leaning in to brush her lips along his, "I do remember a very smart man once telling me '_the best intentions are fraught with disappointment_.'"

"Very true," he agreed and then puzzled asked, "Who said that?"

"You did."

Grissom gave her an abbreviated chuckle. "Sometimes I really do think you memorize everything I say, dear."

"No," she laughed in return. "Just the important stuff."

After a moment, his face lost a little of its jocularity. There was one last thing Grissom wanted to know. "In that email," he began. "You said that you thought we could survive anything. Do you still believe that?"

"I want to."


	10. Ten: The Shadow of a Doubt

**Ten: A Shadow of a Doubt**

It was late Tuesday afternoon and Sara was busy working her way through the latest batch of specimens. As the next day was Christmas Eve and Ana had decreed that work would stop midday and not resume until after Christmas, she was trying to get as much done as possible before then.

_Christmas -- _

Christmas had never been one of Sara's particularly favorite holidays, not that she was a huge fan of holidays in general. Most of the time, holidays meant coming into work early and staying late and having to deal with a higher rate of insanity than usual.

But of Christmas, she had long had a particularly strong aversion.

Because of the rampant commercialism associated with the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, the holiday season meant more than a month long reminder of what she hadn't had growing up. True, there had been a tree and even presents, but then there had also been the drinking and yelling and fighting and the inevitable trips to the hospital.

No, there hadn't been much _peace on earth, goodwill toward men _in the Sidle household, not even at Christmas.

With the steady series of subsequent foster families, even those that were well-meaning enough, the holidays hadn't proven much better. There were always too many kids, too many responsibilities and too few things to really celebrate.

When she went off to college, she knew she was probably the only one there who actually dreaded winter break. Thankfully, several of her professors had projects that still needed to be attended to, holidays or no, so she worked and kept busy.

Working and keeping busy was something she could do. And well.

Since she had entered into the San Francisco police department as one of the lowest ranked staff members, she didn't have to worry about being offered the day off. She would have signed up to work anyway. Why should she take the time off to spend it alone when there were plenty of other people in the department who had families to go home to?

In Vegas, she had done the same. Been happily willing to take the holiday shift. True, she did attend the practically obligatory staff party that even Grissom couldn't find a way to worm his way out of. But of the day itself, there was seldom anything celebratory about it, apart from the drink or two she'd share with which ever of the guys hadn't scored the day off.

Since Grissom in spite of rank and seniority had typically volunteered to work holiday shifts, the two of them had spent quite a few Christmases together over the years. Of course for that rather long stretch where they weren't really speaking to each other, those really hadn't been the happiest of occasions.

Even after they had begun dating, they often worked their own shift and usually parts of Days or Swing as well, in order to help with coverage, so that by the time they got home, there was usually little left of the actual day to even observe. But the time they did have and their own private celebrations, while perhaps unconventional, had been pleasant and peaceful in ways Sara had never known.

But this year would be their first genuine work-free holiday together. True, there would still be Ana and Stephen and Bridget and Luis and Bernie around, but there weren't going to be any jangling phones, no call slips, no robberies or arsons or worse, a dead body or two, to spoil the day.

And if Sara was honest with herself, she was actually looking forward to the prospect.

Perhaps, she thought almost absently, it had been a good thing after all, that she had kept putting off mailing that package she had been intending to send Grissom, as this way she even had a gift to give him on Christmas Day.

Not that gifts were all that important. Thankfully, the two of them had long ago agreed to a policy of moderation when it came to presents (any attempt to banish them altogether had failed miserably on both their accounts). Besides, Grissom tended to enjoy giving gifts more on the spur of the moment and for no reason at all, rather than confine himself to birthdays and holidays. Sara figured it had something to do with his liking of being on the giving rather than the receiving end of surprises.

And speaking of Grissom --

As if her thoughts had conjured him into being, when she looked up from her work, it was to find him trudging up the path with an almost and unusually obsequious looking Bridget in tow.

As Sara took in Grissom's untidy appearance, the way he seemed more discomposed and damp, as if from more than just sweat, the smudges on his face, and the not yet dried mud on his clothes, she weighed whether or not it would be prudent even to hazard to ask.

Considering that Grissom did not even pause to give her any sort of greeting, let alone an explanation, she was glad she hadn't.

Besides, the way he was so seemingly intent on his destination she knew from ample past experience meant one of two things. Either he was intrigued over something to the point of distraction so that he was ultimately hopelessly oblivious to the rest of the world (as he frequently could be) or he was hurrying because he wanted to dispatch an unpleasant task as soon as possible.

She only needed to wait for him to pass to determine it was the latter.

As to the cause, all she had to do was breathe normally. The odor was rankly obvious.

Instantly, Sara knew what must have happened and had to conceal her mirth, especially at the sheepish look Bridget was giving her when she met Sara's inquiring gaze. The poor girl looked about as hapless as Greg had that one day when he had served as the catalyst for Grissom having returned to the lab covered in something far worse than primate pee. Deciding to put Bridget out of her misery, Sara indicated that she would take care of Grissom and wordlessly sent her back to traipsing after her troop. The young woman gave her a grateful nod and mouthed that she would tell her later.

Pausing only long enough to shut the case she was working on and make a quick detour to the kitchen, Sara hurried after him.

She found Grissom sans shirt up to his elbows in soapy water, scrubbing vigorously. The sight gave her pause. There was always something about seeing him engaged in the most woefully mundane tasks that made her smile. After years of blood and bodies and the chaotic disarray of crime scenes, it was good to know that a man like Gil Grissom ever did anything as ordinary as laundry.

"I see you've located our state-of-the art washroom," Sara said, joining him in front of a pair of large metal tubs. "Unfortunately, with all this humidity, nothing you wash will ever get completely dry."

Grissom didn't seem to find this particular piece of information helpful and only continued scouring.

Sara placed a bottle of vinegar on the table beside him. "You might want to add some of this first and let them soak for a while. The acetic acid will help neutralize the smell. Believe me, you aren't the first person around here they've done that to."

"That's a comforting thought," he muttered, although Sara could detect a hint of amusement amongst his rue.

"I take it Bridget didn't warn you that the howlers like to mark their territory with urine?" she asked.

"Not until it was too late, no," Grissom replied. As he was adding the vinegar to the wash water, he said, "I'm beginning to think Bridget might be Greg's long-lost cousin."

"While he certainly does have plenty of them, I seriously doubt it. Besides, you make it sound like that would be a bad thing," Sara chuckled. "And after all, it could be worse."

"How?" queried Grissom.

"You've never seen chimps at the zoo?"

"I think Greg managed to replicate that experience for me just fine."

"True," Sara agreed. "At least urine is sterile."

Grissom gave her a disbelieving glare. Although she could tell that by now the shock had finally begun to wear off and he was more bemused by the absurdity of the whole incident than actually annoyed.

"It is," she insisted. "And actually good for laundering. The ancient Romans used it to bleach their clothes." When his look turned incredulous, she said, "You aren't the only one whose head is full of seemingly useless information."

"There is nothing useless..." Grissom began, but Sara cut him off with a kiss.

He quickly retreated protesting, "You'll get dirty."

"I don't care," she replied and pulled him close and kissed him again.

"You know," Sara began as they broke away, "They arrange it with the monkeys especially. Initiation by pee."

"Really? That's one I haven't heard of before."

"This from the man who required every new hire to donate a pint of fresh blood on their first day," she laughed. "Strange how I don't remember you ever asking me for any."

"We were a little busy at the time."

"Right, that was it," Sara grinned, then giving his disheveled appearance another once over said, "Why don't you grab a shower? I can finish up here."

"You sure?"

"They'll need to soak for a little while anyway."

He gave her a thankful nod and turned to go.

"Gil," she called after him. He stopped. "Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked and then when he persevered to look oblivious, added as if it were obvious, "The rest of your clothes." At his continuing uncharacteristic hesitation, Sara shook her head and sighed, "No one else is here. Besides," she smirked, "it's nothing I haven't seen before, dear."

As he couldn't quite dispute the logic of that particular assertion, Grissom hurriedly stripped and exchanged his soiled clothes for the towel she was extending to him before disappearing off to have that much needed shower.

********

Sara left the sodden, stinking mess to soak for a while before proceeding back to their tent to lay out fresh clothes for Grissom to wear.

It was his trunk that had suddenly given her pause.

Not what she found in it when she opened it for she had simply removed the first shirt, pants and pair of underwear she found. It was what she realized wasn't there.

As they wouldn't be picking up the rest of his belongings from town until Saturday, the trunk was, apart from the neat piles of clothes, a couple of books and the tin she had given him, empty.

She fingered the collar of one of his camp shirts. His current clothes wardrobe was so different from what she was accustomed to seeing him wear, but this was really the first time that the difference and what it meant struck her.

Sara knew Grissom wasn't really the materialistic type. Yes, he owned nice things, liked nice things, but they didn't seem to be absolutely necessary for his happiness. But here he was with barely enough clothes to fill a backpack and no more than a handful of books when he had shelves and shelves of them back in Vegas.

And then when she thought about it, the tent they were living in was little more than a canvass covering to keep out the sun and rain and to deter the encroachment of insects and too had the tendency over time, to develop slimy overcoats of fungus and mold in the same way the fur of a three-toed sloth might. The cots they slept on were more uncomfortable than not. There was no air conditioning. No real reprieve from the heat, at least not during the day and certainly none from the nearly 100% humidity, which really did mean that your clothes never did ever dry. There was no running water. No privacy. The camp food was often monotonous. The fieldwork frequently backbreaking. The cataloguing slow, tedious, unglamorous, but necessary work. Not that there hadn't been plenty of that in Vegas, but still.

And then there was the forest that despite its almost haunting beauty was no proverbial Garden of Eden.

After six hours of sweating to the point where it looked like you had taken a shower with your clothes on, the forest started to loose a little of its wonder. At some point, a tree became just a tree and a flower a flower and that pesky bug that insisted on hovering right by your left ear, just a pesky bug hovering right by your left ear. And at the end of the day, you were lucky if all you returned with was stiffness, sunburn, sore muscles, bug bites, blisters and a mild case of heat exhaustion.

At some point, Grissom, as smart a man as he was, would figure all of that out.

Even if he was at the moment more at ease and happier than she could remember seeing him for a long time and did seem both so blithely content to remain in the current present and equally unconcerned about the future, he would figure it out.

And then...

Sara didn't really want to think about the _and then.._..

But that nasty little voice that she had been mostly able to banish over the last couple of days had begun to pipe up and not so quietly began to whisper again all of her fears and doubts again in earnest.

It wasn't that she didn't trust Grissom or his intentions. She did -- wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

But logic and reason told her that at some point he would realize that everything he had given up far outweighed anything he could have possibly gained by coming and staying here.

After all, he had been shift supervisor and de facto head of the number two lab in the country, a lab he had personally helped elevate to that position. He had spent years, decades, building a reputation for himself as a widely respected forensic entomologist -- one of the few in the country, if not the world.

And he just walked away from all of that as if the act were nothing, nothing at all.

While it was a very grand romantic gesture, how could all of this really satisfy him? How could any life with her make up for everything he had so readily given up?

Sara knew she was no prize. She was a mess. Their conversation the night previous certainly made that fact plain. And she would likely always be a mess. For she did believe that there were just some things you couldn't fix and she was just one of those things.

But then Grissom had never sought to fix her or her problems or tried to turn her into something or someone she wasn't. True, there may have been suggestions (sometimes strongly worded suggestions) that she not allow herself to get too involved in her cases and to make sure she had interests and a life outside of work, but they were always cautions more than criticisms. And when she had finally stopped trying to be what she had mistakenly thought he wanted her to be and just relaxed and was herself, Grissom had responded with all the acceptance and love she had so long mistakenly attempted to earn from him at work.

True, they might tease one another from time to time.

Sara was known to give him a hard time about his wanting to disappear off to sit on his pumpkin for a while, but she still let him do it and was still there when he got back.

And when she had left Vegas because it had just gotten to be too much, Grissom had come after her and as unbelievably as it still seemed even after the last four days, had come to stay.

Part of her still believed that one day she would wake to find everything returned to the way it was, or that she would blink and like a mirage, Grissom would be gone. And she really didn't want to wake or blink or go back to the way things were even just a week ago.

But it could, that little voice kept telling her, things could so easily --

Sara didn't want to have to think that thought all the way through or accept the possibility that he could go away. That all of this -- the happiness, the joy, the warmth and wonder and contentment -- could all so easily be gone once Grissom realized that she wasn't worth it.

She really had meant it, too, when she said she _wanted to_ when he had asked her if she believed that the two of them could survive anything. She did. She wanted to believe it with all her heart and soul, with every fiber of her being.

But then faith had never been one of her strong suits.

It was just so hard to simply believe without reason or facts or evidence, without memory and experience to back things up.

Except Grissom didn't seem to be in any doubt.

Of course, he had always been far better at the whole faith thing than she was.

For Sara recognized that his coming and all that he had done in preparation for that coming, had been acts of faith. He had no idea what he would find when he came, what sort of reception he might receive. Yet, while he had looked nervous, even shy, when she turned to find him standing there that afternoon, there hadn't been the slightest shadow of a doubt in his eyes.

That he carried the surety of that belief with him even now was too hard to simply disregard.

As hard as that choice had been for her to intuitively comprehend, Grissom had chosen to follow his heart rather than his head and had gone and risked it all.

It was a grand romantic gesture, a profound and breathtaking one --

But --

Why was it in life that there always were and had to be _buts_?

*******

Sara hadn't heard Grissom return to the tent. Hadn't heard him begin to hurriedly dress, hadn't heard him call to her, nor heard the tread of his boots on the ground behind her. But she did feel him. Feel one of his warm hands slide around her waist to come to rest on her stomach in order to draw himself nearer to her.

That it was an intimate, rather than a sexual gesture, made the knot in her stomach tighten all the more.

This and all the other little displays of affection he had shown her over the last couple of days had awed her. Something as simple as a not so nonchalant brush against her or when he would stand just a little nearer than what was necessary. That his fingers would linger a little longer when he took things from her, or how his hand would casually settle on the small of her back when he leaned in to see what she was working on.

Yet, his touch was never demanding or intrusive, just a gentle reminder of his presence, as quietly reassuring and unassuming as Grissom himself was. It was almost as if he simply could not get enough of the feel of her and no longer cared who saw or knew.

But the two of them had spent so many years first assiduously avoiding almost any kind of physical contact and then later on so restricting it to their private lives, that the sometimes public nature of his recent gestures surprised her, pleased her, yes, but surprised her all the same.

She had wondered over it for a while, until she, without even realizing it at first, had begun to do the same. While it had started as simply a desire for a tangible confirmation of him being real, it was more than that – an expression of a desire for closeness and connection. And in the end, Grissom appeared to appreciate her touch as much as she did his own.

Sara wanted to close her eyes and relax into him and just allow his nearness to banish her errant thoughts back to the deep, dark recesses of her mind where she kept all the things she did not want to feel or have to think about.

Except the previous night's conversation wouldn't let her dismiss her apprehensions so easily. After all, what had become of all of their denials and good intentions, but heartache and distance and she didn't want that, even if part of her still feared that if she voiced her concerns, the worries would become more than just worries, but actual realities.

Despite all of her gloomy thoughts however, somehow -- she wasn't sure how -- Sara was still able to keep her voice something approximating steady and even light, so that when he asked her if she was okay, she could actually get out the words, "Shouldn't I be the one asking you that question?"

For as difficult as the night before had been for her, she knew that it had been equally if not more so for him.

Although there had been something, something about the night and the dark and the quiet that had made it easier to talk about all the things they never could quite seem to say in the harsh bright light of day.

"I'm good," Grissom replied. "Still a little damp, but other than that, okay."

"You still glad you came?" she hazarded to ask, a little of her unease slipping through.

"Very," he murmured. "But you never answered my question." When she made no reply, he said, his thumb caressing the nape of her neck, "Sara?"

When she turned to peer up at him, the slight smile she gave him didn't quite reach her dark eyes. And while they had both been up half the night, Grissom was quick to recognize that it wasn't from tiredness.

Since he seemed to sense her disquiet, Sara knew there was no point in telling him she was _fine,_ that nothing was wrong. So she decided to go with the truth or at least the beginnings of it:

"Sometimes I still wonder if you are real."

Grissom replied with a knowing nod and a slight half-smile, "I've been wondering that for almost eleven years now," before reaching for her hand and whispering, "Close your eyes."

Sara did as he asked.

********

Gently, Grissom pressed her palm against the bare skin just above his heart that his having not finished doing up the rest of the buttons of his shirt had left exposed. His actions were rewarded with the ghost of a grin on her lips. He narrowed the slight space left between them, leaned in and drew out the two syllables of her name as he whispered "Sara" into her ear. But her breath seemed to quicken rather than even out, the grasp of the tips of her fingers tightened instead of relaxed and there was an abrupt inhale as she buried her face into his neck. Her other hand settled on his arm as if she needed to steady herself.

Grissom brushed his cheek against hers, murmuring as he did so, "I'm here," before allowing his lips to graze hers once, then twice and then lightly kissing her until an unexpected whimper tickled at the back of her throat and he drew away confused.

At the abrupt loss of contact, Sara's eyes flashed open and he saw before she quickly looked away that they were wet and wide, with what he wasn't sure, but it seemed that what he had intended as acts of comfort and reassurance had been anything but.

"Honey," he said, "Honey, look at me. What is it?" he asked, his voice and his touch tender with concern.

Sara didn't reply for a while and he thought that perhaps she wasn't going to, so he was taken aback when she finally opened her mouth and a torrent of words poured out, all running together as if she just couldn't contain or control all the insecurities that were weighing so heavily on her mind. Grissom simply stood there listening and waited for her to get it all out.

When it appeared that she was finished, he said, "Sara, we're surrounded by thousands of species of insects, how can you think that this is some sort of an end to a career?" Then realizing that all her worry about him having left his job wasn't what was really bothering her, he said, "But you aren't afraid that I am going to get tired of the work."

"No."

"Sara --"

"I don't want you to regret --"

"I don't," Grissom insisted.

"Maybe not today or tomorrow or even next week or next month or next year. But Gil, I know right now it's easy to say that you don't regret it. Everything is new and exciting and different --"

He held up a hand to still her. "I didn't come here for the bugs," he said. "I came because I wanted to be with you.

"Sara, is that really so hard to believe?"

"Yes."

It was the honesty that resounded in that single syllable that struck him hard and despite the fact that it grieved him to own it, Grissom understood.

He knew all too well that the world treated those it considered damaged or broken as if they weren't worthy of love simply because they were "damaged" and "broken." He knew, too, that it was precisely those people who wanted for love so badly, but then didn't have any idea what to do when they actually found it.

He knew because he had been one of them, was still one of them.

For so long he had thought he had no right to love or be loved or hope or dream of a life beyond that of professional achievement and success.

But then the unexpected happened.

Sara happened.

And changed everything.

"Sara –" he whispered, wanting to say more, wanting to say _I love you -- I need you -- I want to be with you _and knowing he should have told her, told her that every day, _I'm sorry. So sorry. _

And while those were simple words, he could not seem to get them past the lump in his throat. Besides, he knew there was nothing he could do to erase the past or even make up or hope to atone for it, all he had was the present.

So instead of speaking, he reached for her, hugged her to him, closed his eyes and let out a long sad sigh, understanding but not quite sure how to make her understand. As his palms came to rest on the small of her back and he placed a lingering kiss into her hair, Grissom felt her take a long deep breath, which it sounded like Sara had desperately needed and then another and a third.

That was when he, even though it pained him to do so, risked asking after something that had been worrying him. "Do you want me to go?"

Her emphatic "No!" startled them both.

"Look," he began, "I know this isn't going to be easy. And by this, I don't mean," he said gesturing to the forest surrounding them, "but us.

"It's never been easy. And it probably never will be."

He paused in the truth of his own words.

For it wasn't like they never fought or disagreed, had never said or done, intentional or no, things that had hurt the other. And he knew they would again. That was certain.

Grissom had seen enough of life, of real life, to know better than to blindly believe in the existence of fairy-tale endings. That all he had to do was show up and everything would be fine.

He might be a moron and a coward and a fool when it came to loving Sara, but he wasn't stupid. Well, not that stupid.

And Sara was right. The rush and flush of it all, the newness of it all, would fade and reality and the everyday would resume. But he wasn't so sure that was a bad thing.

"Honey," he said, giving her an uncertain smile, "I don't know how to do any of this any more or better than you do. But I do know I want to try."

He wished he knew how to explain it. Explain to her what it had been like having her gone and how wonderful it was to be back with her again. The pleasure he felt even in just being able to kiss her goodnight and then good morning. But as they were often wont to do, his own words failed him.

_When words are scarce_ indeed, he rued and considered the small cloth-wrapped bundle secreted beneath his shirts, wondering if this were the moment.

But he knew it wasn't, wasn't quite yet.

Yet the quote from _Richard II_ and the thoughts of the contents of his trunk reminded him both of something else he had brought with him and the rest of the advice Sara had scribbled into the Shakespeare book she had given him two years earlier: _Talent Borrows, genius steals_.

And while the words he was suddenly considering might be borrowed, it didn't make their meaning any less true.

He motioned for her to sit down on the cot beside him. Sara watched him pull a thin unfamiliar volume from his things.

It didn't much appear like a book Grissom would carry. The cover was populated by what appeared at first blush to be delicate blue flowers, irises, perhaps pansies, Sara couldn't tell.

"New book?" she asked.

"Actually, old book. New to me. Sonnets," he explained. "The book you gave me wouldn't fit in my carry-on. Besides, weren't you the one who told me you could never have too much Shakespeare?"

"No, that was you," she replied, her lips twitching slightly at the corners.

"Doesn't make it any less true."

"No, it doesn't," she readily conceded.

Before he began to carefully thumb through the old and yellowed pages, he turned to her and said,

"'How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December's bareness everywhere!'"

For that had been what the last months, the past year had been like -- a seemingly endless winter without any hope of a spring to come.

Then he found the passage he was looking for and handing the volume to her, asked her to read it aloud.

Sara started, her voice still shaky, but steadying as she made her way through the measures.

"'When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;'"

Grissom added his voice to hers as he recited the last few lines from memory:

"'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;'"

Until he alone finished,

"'For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.'"

He took the book from her and gently easing it closed said, "I felt that way when I had just the hope of being with you again. Having it --" His voice trailed off, the thoughts themselves were too overwhelming to be spoken.

After a while, he said, "The only regret I have is the one I always seem to have when it comes to you. I only wish it hadn't taken me so long to come in the first place.

"So no, Sara, I'm not worried about being disappointed and unless you ask me to go…"

"I don't want you to go."

"Then I'm not going anywhere. Okay?"

She nodded.

"So I think we both need to stop worrying," he said. "Or at least try," he added with a smile that they both ended up sharing.

This time when he bent to kiss her, there was no hesitation or doubt on either of their parts. Sara's lips met his eagerly and she was the one to lengthen the kiss until the soft warm glow of desire that had unhurriedly flowed between them over the last couple of days, flashed and flared into wanting and longing and perhaps the kiss might have led to something else -- something more -- but for the sounds of Bernie and Luis returning to camp.

For while in the forest, the pair were frequently so quiet that they could emerge right behind you and you wouldn't even know they were there, at camp, the two seemed more like a couple of proverbial bulls in an equally proverbial china shop with all the clamor and chaos they created.

So no matter how tempted they both were to linger a little longer alone together than what was, considering the fact that the tent flaps were currently opened wide, prudent, Grissom and Sara reluctantly broke away. But before they went to go, Sara moved to do up the rest of Grissom's buttons and gave him a mystified glance when he covered her hands with his so as to still her motions.

"Don't you think you'd better let me do that?" he asked by way of explanation. "We both know you've never been all that good with buttons. Well, fastening them anyway," he qualified with a barely contained smirk. "As for unfastening them --"

She flushed at his insinuation, the appearance of which was heightened all the more when she caught sight of the way he was looking at her.

Sara had long known that Grissom was the kind of man who was equally adept at making love to a woman with a mere whisper, the briefest of touches, with just a single long held look.

Like he was doing now.

Those bright blue eyes of his deepened and darkened as they were, vowed _Soon_.


	11. Eleven: Upping the Ante

**Eleven: Upping the Ante**

As dawn on that particular Christmas Eve morning still had an hour yet when Sara stirred and began to stretch, she rightly expected her foot to make contact with the warm body beside her. So when it didn't, she started and was suddenly very wide awake and for a couple of not so fleeting heart-stopping moments, she honestly did believe that what she most dreaded had come to pass, that she had merely dreamt the whole thing.

But then thankfully reason and her senses kicked in. Sure, the space beside her was empty and cool to the touch, but she could still smell Grissom in the sheets.

And so she breathed again.

Though exactly what Grissom was doing up at this hour, Sara had absolutely no idea. The night before he had looked so worn out, something which hadn't surprised her in the slightest as she knew all too well that spending the day with Bridget frequently meant leaving even the roughly established trails and romping sometimes at full gallop through the forest just to keep up with the howlers. So she had refused his help with the dinner dishes and shooed him off to bed. He must have seen the wisdom of her suggestion in this, for he had readily acquiesced without the hint of a protest.

Not that Sara had really expected him to go straight to sleep, and he hadn't. When she went to check up on him half an hour later, she found him on top of the sheets, still fully dressed, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose and the book he had been in the process of perusing not far from his fingers. She'd marked his place and set the volume on the bedside table before carefully easing his spectacles free. Unsurprisingly, his only response had been to snore ever louder.

That moment so reminded her of the first time Grissom had fallen asleep on her sofa back in that old studio of hers in Vegas all those years ago that Sara couldn't resist smiling as she rose to dress, recalling as she did so that had been her first introduction to his snoring. While she had regarded that discovery itself amusing, his firm denials were even funnier.

*******

Sara found Grissom busy at work in the kitchen area. Taking in the large number of bowls already full of cut up vegetables, she shook her head and asked, "How long have you been up exactly?"

He glanced up and gave her a warm smile. "A while," he said.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asked, resting a concerned hand on his shoulder.

He had to fight back a grin as he replied, "With all the snoring?" as Sara hadn't been snoring, not really, but he felt that morning that it never hurt to tease.

Instead, he had awakened to find himself confined to the margins of the mattress. For Sara, despite her slight build, had managed sometime during the night to commandeer the majority of the bed. As he had woken up in this exact same predicament in Vegas upon numerous occasions, Grissom hadn't been surprised, and despite the slight stiffness in his spine, he actually welcomed it, since its occurrence was something that he had actually begun to miss while they had been apart.

He'd been tempted to wake her then, sorely tempted, but when he had glanced down at his watch to discern the time, he realized it wouldn't be long before Sara would be up anyway and decided instead to let her sleep. Besides, he had work to do.

So he had risen and readied himself as quietly as he could.

Although when he'd spotted his book on the bedside table with his reading glasses tucked neatly on top, the sight gave him pause. Knowing that it had to have been Sara's doing, warmth had risen in his chest at the thought and he hadn't been able to hold back his smile. His grin had only grown at the slight soft shuffling half-snore that was Sara's only reaction to him placing a kiss along the smattering of freckles revealed by the thin strap of her camisole having slipped from one of her shoulders.

He was still smiling now, which was when Sara realized that Grissom was merely parroting what she had told him a few mornings earlier. Nevertheless, she shot him a dirty look before leaning in to kiss him good morning.

He expected a simple peck on the cheek, so when she nudged his chin in order to kiss him fully on the lips, he eagerly and enthusiastically returned the gesture and was if it were possible, even more pleased when her lips parted and the kiss turned into a heady, opened mouthed one that was far less innocent and far more hungry than their usual morning kisses.

Sara, still both breathless and bemused, asked as they broke apart, "Isn't it a little early to be starting on breakfast?"

"It's not breakfast."

When he didn't continue she said, "So are you going to tell me what you're up to then?"

He gestured to the organized chaos surrounding him and answered, "Cooking."

"I can see _that_, Gilbert. Cooking what?"

"Tamales," he replied. "Ana was saying how labor-intensive the prep work was so --"

"So you decided to get an early start," she finished with a nod of comprehension.

"I wanted to get the meat cooked before you got up. But don't worry, I think I've worked out how to make vegetarian ones."

"That was thoughtful of you. But tamales?"

"Traditional Christmas Eve dish," he supplied by way of reply.

So Grissom had been paying attention to something other than her at dinner that first night. Not that anyone could have missed the highly animated discussion Ana, Bernie and Luis had been having about the merits of their respective grandmother's tamales.

Readily recalling the unresolved nature of the conflict, Sara asked, "So whose recipe did you choose? Or are you making three different kinds?"

Grissom shook his head. "No one's actually and just two."

Sara laughed. "Still, I am beginning to think Hodges has been rubbing off on you." At his puzzled expression, she added, "You, um, have something on your nose, Gil. Right there," she gestured.

He attempted to wipe it away with the back of his hand before he caught on to what she was intimating.

"That's not why I'm doing it," he insisted.

Her tone was incredulous. "You're not trying to impress the new boss then?"

"No," he countered evenly, giving her a soft smile. "I was in the mood to do something celebratory." Then when she looked as if she was having a hard time believing this, he added, "As we've had precious little to celebrate over the last year."

Sara nodded sadly at the truth of this, before beginning to roll up her sleeves. "You want some help?" she asked.

"I'd love some."

*******

Later that afternoon when Grissom returned from his sojourn out in the field with Ana and Stephen, it was to find Sara back in the kitchen again.

"Get all your specimens done?" he asked.

"Surprisingly yes," she replied. "Amazing what you can accomplish --"

"Without distractions?" he finished, recalling what she'd told him just before he left that morning. While Sara had been bemoaning having to pull a full morning of desk-duty because _someone_ had put her behind, when Grissom had offered to give her a hand, she replied that she would probably get more done if he wasn't there to distract her.

"With proper motivation," she offered. He arched an eyebrow at this, but did not ask. "Besides," Sara continued, "I had other things I wanted to do this afternoon."

"Oh?"

"Like finish all this up," she supplied with a sigh, "if we're to hope to eat sometime before tomorrow. Besides," she added, "I'm sure even Ana would agree that one cannot live on tamales alone. Even if it is Christmas."

"Speaking of Ana," Grissom replied, "she said she would be back in about half an hour."

"Checking to make sure we're doing it properly?" Sara queried with a laugh.

Grissom shook his head. "No. She didn't think we should end up being the ones to have all the fun."

"That does sound like Ana," said Sara. "Although she's usually not all that enthusiastic about cooking. Tamales must be the exception."

"Probably."

"But please," she said, gesturing to the bucket Grissom was carrying and eyeing its contents suspiciously, "don't tell me those are more specimens for cataloging?"

"Okay," he seemed reluctant to agree. But when Sara continued to appear concerned and almost crestfallen, he said, "It's not. Just fruit."

Slightly confused, she said, "I thought you were helping Ana and Stephen mark out the new plot."

"I was."

"And you just happened to stop and pick fruit on the way back?"

"Are you accusing me of shirking work?" he queried in return as he went to wash his hands.

"Never," laughed Sara.

And they both set to task.

Sara was working on finishing the masa dough when she noticed the way he was smiling at her. Grissom had been like that of late, full of faces that she couldn't quite read.

"What?" she asked.

"I was just thinking that it was good to come home to you at the end of the day."

"Don't worry," she replied, "I am sure you'll get your share of desk du--" Her voice trailed off mid-word once what he had just said sunk in. "I, um, wouldn't exactly consider this all that homey," she stammered after a while.

"I've found that home is more a state of being than an actual physical location," Grissom supplied.

Sara had to agree. _Home_ was a word she had long had a hard time quite defining, let alone comprehending. Over the years though, she had grown to associate _home_ with that sense of comfort and warmth, security and ease she felt whenever she and Grissom were alone together.

Unable to say anything more, she simply said, "I'm glad you're home."

"Me, too."

And when she smiled, a bright, wide smile that revealed the slight gap between her teeth and showed up even in her eyes, Grissom grinned just as earnestly back.

Although as he eased a curl of hers back behind one ear, he let out an unexpected laugh.

"You uh, have something," he said, reaching up to wipe the pale powder from her cheek. But the masa paste was too thick and sticky to simply brush aside. And while the damp corner of a towel did manage to take care of it, Grissom had neglected to wring the cloth out properly so that a slight trickle of water dribbled onto the bare skin just beneath the nape of her neck. This caused Sara to shiver slightly at the shock of it. But it wasn't until his thumb, apart from just brushing the moisture away, began to slip further along the neckline of her blouse that she began to gnaw at her lower lip.

"Tease," she whispered.

His eyes were dark, intent and intense as he intoned, "I never tease," and covered her mouth with his and kissed her until she whimpered with pleasure.

It seemed that after the last several days' slow, long, lingering dance of seduction, the two of them were both willing and wanting to finally surrender to their mutual desires.

But they hadn't long to savor the sharp intake of breath, the sighs and nearness before came a discrete cough from behind them.

They spun to find Ana and Stephen standing there, buckets in hand.

Ana, with a barely contained look of amusement, merely placed hers on the counter before she departed saying, "Plantain leaves for wrapping the tamales."

Stephen soon followed, muttering something about the need to go fetch more water before dinner.

The pair having disappeared as quickly as they'd come, Grissom and Sara turned to each other, their shared expression of guilt and recrimination morphing into hilarity at the absurdity of the situation. They broke out laughing, which led Sara to beam at him all the more, as it was so good to hear Grissom laugh like that again. Not just with a chuckle or a mere hiccup of mirth but with a full deep resonating laugh that softened his face and made his eyes merry.

Once they had both finally caught their breath, she said, "Maybe we better get back to work."

Grissom nodded and when Ana and Stephen returned five minutes later, he and Sara were once again industriously -- and innocently -- employed.

*******

Although they were more heard than seen, Bernie and Luis returned to camp not too long after. Stephen begged off kitchen duty to join them. But it wasn't until just before dark that Bridget stumbled in, looking more than a little harried and full of apologies for being late and explanations of how the troop she had been following that day had decided to lead her on a merry chase for a several hours that morning before settling down for their usual midday nap.

Sara might have been mistaken, but she thought that Grissom's expression upon hearing about Bridget's predicament was less than conciliatory.

She and Grissom along with Ana had been finishing things up in the kitchen. Everything pretty much in hand, Grissom excused himself to go get cleaned up. But before going, he paused to place a kiss in Sara's hair, the act of which caused her to goggle after him.

For while there was nothing inherently scandalous about that particular kiss, that he had kissed her when there were others beside themselves around had genuinely floored her.

What Sara didn't know though was that while she was intently gazing after Grissom's retreating form, Ana was just as intently watching her.

"You look surprised," the older woman quietly observed as she began laying plates on the table.

Still a little dazed, Sara replied, "I guess I am."

Ana's tone turned curious. "Is he usually like this?"

"Full of surprises?" Sara considered the prospect for a moment then smiled. "I suppose in his own way, he is."

Ana's next words weren't a question. "You two have known each other for a long time."

Sara nodded. "It will be... eleven years in February."

"And yet he still manages to surprise you?"

"All the time," she confessed.

Ana laughed. "That's a good sign."

"That?"

"That your life will never be dull."

Sara had to chuckle at the apparent veracity of this. She had to admit, too, that life with Grissom was seldom, if ever, dull. It was just that his behavior had been even more inexplicable as of late. That kiss being just the most recent perplexing thing he had done.

It was just that Grissom had never been one for public displays of affection. Kisses and embraces were private, much like most of their life together had been. The private nature of their relationship had never really troubled her. Both of them were private people, had always been private people. She hadn't expected that to change just because they were seeing each other. Besides, after all the flack she had gotten over Hank, Sara certainly had no interest whatsoever in having her own personal life made public ever again.

Private was private. And theirs had always been an intimate sort of privacy.

She supposed she should have expected things to be a bit different here. Despite all of Ana's well-meaning machinations, there really was no actual privacy to be found in camp apart from what rare moments one could manage to carve out during the day. The night afforded even less, with everyone housed in such close quarters.

So the fact that she and Grissom had yet to consummate their new life together hadn't worried Sara.

It certainly wasn't for a want of passion. She need only look into his eyes to know he still desired her in that way. But it was more than that and had always been more than that between them.

Besides, she knew, too, that there were far greater intimacies to be found beyond just the physical ones and those were certainly of the sort that Grissom had been more than willing and eager to share with her. But what Sara hadn't realized until just recently was that Grissom had been over the last several days, however quaint the word sounded, _courting_ her. For that was exactly what he had been doing: slowly, patiently courting her, cultivating again those quiet intimacies they had once shared.

The simple pleasures of being with each other again had reawakened her memories of those days during their first summer together, and yet, these latest days had brought with them all the comfort and joy that only a love grown with time and experience could bring.

Anyway, there seemed to be no reason to rush.

The years had brought her patience, too, that and a greater appreciation for uncomplicated deeds and gestures. Youth may have its vigor, but age and time and Gil Grissom had taught her the real meaning and pleasure of passion. He may not have done so knowingly, but he had.

But while it seemed that Grissom could be an incredibly patient person if the needs warranted it, the needs in this case seemed to be wearing thin on both their parts. For Sara had been finding it harder and harder over the passing days to resist reciprocating his attentions. It wasn't long before she decided that not only was it foolish, but pointless to fight her feelings and eventually gave into her instincts and her own desires to be near and close to him.

Hence that good morning kiss and the rush she had felt just before they had gotten caught kissing in the kitchen earlier. And yet, Grissom's last kiss had been a subtle reminder that his passion always existed hand-in-hand alongside his tenderness.

She knew that either and both boded well.

********

As she caught sight of Grissom, his face well lathered with soap and razor in hand, Sara asked, "You aren't really going to shave it all off again, are you?"

Grissom had intended to do just that, but upon registering that particular disapproving tone in her voice, decided to shelve the idea, at least for now. So he hurriedly shook his head and told her he was _just cleaning it up before it got too scruffy_ and was rewarded with another of Sara's bright smiles and her leaning in to tell him that she rather liked him _scruffy_.

But any further discussion on the matter was forestalled by the sound of Ana calling for Sara.

At this, Grissom muttered rather ruefully, "They do like to keep you hopping."

"Like you can talk," she replied. " At least they restrict their summons to times when I am supposed to be awake. You on the other hand..."

As he couldn't rightly refute this, Grissom merely shrugged and Sara went to see what Ana needed.

It must have been something simple, as it wasn't long before she returned, just in time to reach up and lightly brush a thumb along his cheek before giving his ear lobe a playful tug, with the airy explanation that he had _missed some soap_.

Grissom shrugged and said, "Have you ever tried shaving one-handed with only a pocket mirror?"

To which Sara was forced to concede, "No, I can't say that I ever have." And knowing Grissom was neither partial to the color pink, nor in the habit of carrying compacts, she asked, "Where did you get the mirror by the way?"

The answer proved simple enough. "Bridget."

"Trying to make it up to you, is she?"

But before he could reply, Sara leaned in and while he thought she was going to kiss him, she ran her cheek and then her lips along the line of bare skin just above his beard.

"What are you doing?" came his nearly breathless query, one that was born more out of curiosity than criticism.

Her answer was equally low and longing. "Just checking your work."

"I see," he said, his own voice almost husky in timbre. Wanting to prolong the intimate contact as long as possible, he murmured, "Close enough for you?"

Her hum of a reply buzzed against his cheek.

*******

It wasn't until Sara tugged the towel from around his neck that she noticed that Grissom had changed into a bright blue oxford button down that she hadn't seen him wear since he'd arrived. She smiled appreciatively, having always loved that color on him as it tended to heighten the deepness of his eyes.

"I'm starting to feel underdressed," she whispered.

"You're as lovely as always, my dear," he said and meant it. Just as he had meant it when he had once told her _Since I met you_ when she had asked him_ Since when are you interested in beauty?_ even if he hadn't exactly intended to intimate as much at the time. The words had just come and yet he wouldn't have taken them back for all the world. For they were true. Sara had long filled him with thoughts on loveliness and beauty.

She was beautiful. He'd always thought so. She most certainly was now. While her hair was more auburn than dark and her skin more freckled than fair, her eyes were as yet that same deep rich brown. And her smile hadn't changed. When her grin broadened, it was to reveal the slight gap in her teeth that he'd always been fond of for some reason he couldn't articulate and Sara couldn't comprehend. It didn't matter. She was beautiful.

He thought of how Shakespeare had extolled the fairness of his Dark Lady from the sonnet he had read to her two years before when she had presented him with that volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare:

_I think my love as rare_

_As any she belied with false compare_.

The sentiment was just as apt now as it had been then.

The cause for Sara's smile however wasn't amusement exactly. Instead, she was entertaining appreciative thoughts of her own.

His turning to hang up the towel to dry provided Sara with ample opportunity to take in the rest of Grissom's appearance, admiring as she did so, the cut and fit his jeans. But upon observing that they seemed to hang a little looser on him than she remembered, her admiration turned to concern. The thinness was certainly more obvious now, as the jeans couldn't hide the changes the way the baggy khaki pants and loose shirts could.

So that lean, almost haggard look she had first seen him wear the Saturday before hadn't merely been from tiredness or the heat. Grissom had lost weight since the last time she'd seen him, which was troubling only because she knew it was unlikely to have been either deliberate or healthy, and it meant that not only hadn't he been sleeping, he hadn't been eating either.

At least his appetite seemed to have returned, she mused. The sleep she knew would come in time.

When he caught her scrutinizing him all Sara could do was stammer, "You, uh... you look good."

Which was the truth in spite of all of her concerns. Not that Gil Grissom wasn't ordinarily an attractive man. Even hot, sweaty, dirty and disheveled, she found him a sight for sore eyes. But dressed and relaxed as he was at the moment, he was arrestingly handsome.

She supposed that most people would say that he had aged well. She'd be the last person to disagree. In fact, she thought him even more good looking now than when they had first met. And yes, the grey hair was still attractive. Very attractive.

"Actually," she said, taking a few steps nearer to better narrow the slight distance remaining between them, "You're looking a little hot," before reaching up and casually undoing the second button on his shirt and then the third before pronouncing, "That's better," with a self-satisfied sort of grin.

"Now who's a tease?" he asked.

She only echoed his earlier response, "I never tease," despite the fact that her fingers still lingered at the flesh along his throat and chest that her unbuttoning had so recently revealed.

"I see," Grissom replied as he took up that hand.

But the kiss she expected him to place into her palm never came. In its stead, the roughness of his beard tickled at the inside of her wrist, only to be replaced by the softness of his lips and the warmth of his breath which led Sara to close her eyes in rapt appreciation.

However, the quiet pleasure was abruptly brought to an end by a loud exclamation from elsewhere in camp.

After too many years of equating such sounds with danger or alarm, Grissom and Sara hurried to find the others.

Thankfully, the cry proved to be one of delight rather than distress.

It appeared that while Ana and Grissom and Sara had all been occupied in the kitchen, Stephen and the guys had been working on a surprise of their own: a tiny tired up tree, alight and decked out with small brightly colored balls and strips of paper and topped with a gleaming gold star.

Sara had to cover her mouth to hide her glee, but her gasp of "It's a Charlie Brown tree," slipped out anyway.

*******

Dinner that evening was a festive occasion. It was a veritable feast of almost epic proportions, which explained why it had taken the three of them the rest of the afternoon to prepare. But compared with all that earlier busyness, the meal was a leisurely drawn out affair, with much smiles and laughter being exchanged as they passed the heavily laden platters to each other, attempting as they did so to find room on their own plates for the boiled tamales, _arroz_ or fried rice, fresh tortillas, _masamorra _corn pudding and sautéed vegetable _picadillo_. Most of which, the Costa Ricans at least, slathered with generous helpings of _salas lizano, _a thick, sweet, slightly spicy condiment even more popular and versatile than ketchup was in the United States.

And although the three of them had had to get a little creative in order to replicate Stephen's favorite holiday dish: candied yams, the honey in place of the brown sugar, and cashews and meringue topping instead of walnuts and marshmallows worked well. The grapes and apples that were typically imported to help celebrate the day were a big hit amongst the Ticos, especially as Grissom had chosen to pan fry the apples in cinnamon and butter before serving them.

Even before the last of the dishes had been devoured, the meal was deemed an enormous success. But the food hadn't been the only high point. Bernie, whose father was an expert amateur ornithologist, regaled the table with several rounds of _Name that Bird_, which proved as amusing as it was educational.

Throughout dinner, Sara could feel Grissom's eyes on her, caught him more than once at it, and was caught by him in return, and each time she felt the hot warm glow inside of her burn ever brighter.

*******

She wasn't entirely certain which of the guys suggested a celebratory hand of cards after dinner, but Sara was definitely sure that their playing poker against Grissom wasn't the best of ideas. However, Bernie and Luis insisted on it.

In the end, all Sara could do was caution them to _be careful_, as otherwise Grissom was likely to _take the shirt right off your back_.

At this, a few inquisitive eyebrows went up and the two younger Ticos looked perplexed for a moment, trying to determine the precise meaning of the unfamiliar phrase.

When the befuddlement was replaced by several impish grins, Sara quickly qualified, "Not literally."

But none at the table apart from Grissom, who seemed to be intentionally feigning indifference in this instance, appeared to believe her.

Bernie's not so delicate inquiry of "You know this from experience?" certainly proved that point.

At the bald innuendo, Sara shook her head and replied, "No." Then pursing her lips, she uttered another "No" with even more emphasis before she decided it better not to attempt to argue that the phrase was just another English language idiom.

"Fine," she conceded in exasperation. The guys could learn the hard way for all she cared. "Go ahead and play. But don't say I didn't warn you."

Not particularly interested in witnessing the slaughter, Sara offered to help Ana make coffee and finish up the cake. Before she joined her though, Sara rested a hand on Grissom's shoulder, bent and whispered into his ear, "You play nice."

He only grinned as if to say, "Who me?"

*******

The cake was another local holiday tradition, a _tres leche_, or three milk cake, which was a confection liberally drenched in a rich mixture of heavy cream, rum and sweetened condensed milk. As the dessert needed to be chilled before serving, Ana had baked the cake in a converted Dutch oven on the cook top earlier that afternoon. Now all that remained was to make the whipped topping and cut up the fruit garnish. Sara volunteered to work on the cream.

As she was doing so, she couldn't help but remember telling Grissom one afternoon quite some time ago that his concerns over the fact that she had been in the process of making him breakfast were misplaced, since whipping cream didn't really count as cooking per se. After all, its production really just involved the application of basic principles of physics and as she did after all possess a degree in the field, the task certainly fell within her purview.

While she vigorously beat the cream, sugar and vanilla mixture, Sara caught Ana so frequently glancing up from her chopping and peeling to shoot long appreciative looks at the petite Christmas tree that Ana ended up shrugging and admitting that as they didn't usually have a tree during the holidays, its appearance this year had come as quite a surprise.

"There seem to be a lot of those going around here lately," Sara replied with a grin.

"So," Ana began casually as she continued to massacre her pile of mangos, "Is he really that good at poker?"

"Gil? Let's just say it is a good thing they're only playing for matchsticks," Sara replied. "He's been playing and pretty much winning since before either Luis or Bernie were born. Almost since before _I _was born."

"He doesn't have any tells?"

Sara had to hide her surprise at Ana's knowledge of poker terminology. "Not that I've ever notice," she replied.

"Perhaps not when it comes to poker," Ana laughed. "You've never noticed the way he looks at you when he doesn't think you or anyone else is watching?"

Sara had indeed seen that look, but had never thought that anyone else had. But before she could reply, Ana was saying, "Funny, he doesn't look like a consummate poker player."

"Well, you know what they say. Looks can be deceiving."

*******

By the time the topping and fruit were ready and the coffee percolated, Grissom had already amassed an obscene number of matchsticks. So perhaps it was a good thing Ana and Sara appeared when they did, since it gave the others an opportunity to gracefully bow out of the game.

Over the course of the night, the Imperial beer had flowed rather freely, but Ana brought out a bottle of _guaro_ to serve with dessert. Sara declined a mug, but Grissom accepted the one Luis handed to him.

"I would be --" Sara began, but before she could finish getting out her warning, Grissom had downed the helping of clear liquid in a single shot, just as he had seen the others do. He choked, sputtered and coughed over her, "Be careful with that."

Luis and Bernie chuckled.

Sara grinned and told Grissom, "They probably think it serves you right."

When he continued to look clueless over what he may or may not have done, Sara simply shook her head in exasperation.

"So what was that?" he asked.

"_Guaro_, sugar cane liquor," she offered. "It has all the benefits of burning when it goes down, knocking you flat on your ass drunk in no time at all and leaving you with a hell of a hangover in the morning. Of course its brain-erasing properties tend to make you forget all about the last part while you're drinking it."

"Personal experience?" he asked more curious than concerned as he hadn't really seen Sara have a serious drink for nearly three years.

She shook her head. "I only ever had a couple of sips to be polite. Which was more than enough for me."

Grissom decided to stick to his _cafe negro_ after that.

They were both in the midst of finishing off their cake when Sara leaned in to whisper almost conspiratorially, "So --"

"So?" he echoed.

"So what did you learn?"

Still confused, he asked, "About?"

"During the Pfeiffer case, you know the one with the chocolate-eating poker player, Warrick told me that you had said that poker wasn't a game of interaction, but rather observation.

"So what did you learn about everyone? You know a bit like psychoanalysis but with cards. Or are you planning on keeping those cards close to your chest as usual?"

He seemed to consider the question. "At first blush?"

Sara laughed, "Considering you've been here five days already, I wouldn't call it first blush, but yes."

"It's more of an art than a science," he cautioned.

"And psychoanalysis usually isn't?"

He had to concede that was indeed true before he began, "Bernie is the typical beginner. Doesn't know what he has or how to make the most of it, and tends to talk too much in order to cover his nervousness. That and he tends to flash his cards.

"Luis, on the other hand, out bids and over-plays his hands and doesn't know when to quit when he is ahead."

"The follies of youth?" Sara suggested.

"Not exactly."

"The recklessness of someone with something to prove?"

"Perhaps."

With a knowing sort of smirk, Sara said, "Why doesn't that surprise me."

When she gave no further response, even to the quizzical look he was giving her, Grissom continued, "Stephen may say that he is a terrible player, but he isn't. He pays attention to the other players, intelligently weighs his options, bets and plays judiciously."

"But?"

"Sometimes," Grissom explained, "consistently playing conservatively only leads to a slow, yet steady bleed out."

"You mean he doesn't take risks?"

He shook his head. "At cards no. He plays within his comfort zone, but never beyond it. But that fact doesn't seem to concern or bother him."

"And Bridget?"

"She can't bluff, just like you."

Slightly affronted at this Sara said, "Are you implying that women are incapable of intentional misdirection?"

"Certainly not," he replied. "But the two of you still can't bluff worth --"

She cut him off with a terse, "Careful."

"Anything," Grissom finished blithely.

*******

During dessert, Bernie was actually able to find a station on his shortwave radio that wasn't playing the weather, news, futbol or the ever-ubiquitous 24/7 holiday music.

Not too much later, Luis, in a bout of alcohol induced bravado and probably with more than a little prodding from Bernie, got up and rather shyly asked Sara if she would like to dance. As she had been unable to come up with a polite refusal quick enough, Sara ended up allowing the young man to help her to her feet and lead her to a small open space.

Grissom looked more bemused than irritated or jealous, at least until Ana intimated that Grissom should do the same with her and would absolutely brook no refusal. Sara thought it served him right. Although as Ana was a far better dancer than Luis, she had to concede that Grissom had probably gotten the better end of the deal.

But it wasn't long after the first song ended that Grissom came up behind Luis and giving him a tap on the shoulder, asked to cut in. Sara had to work to hide her relief.

"I'm beginning to think you were wrong about Bridget being Greg's cousin," she murmured.

"Luis?" Grissom asked.

"He dances just as bad."

Which was true. It seemed that Luis -- and Bernie too, if Bridget's face was any indication -- possessed not only their former colleague's enthusiasm for dancing, but also his affinity for stepping on his partner's toes.

Thankfully, Grissom did not possess that particular foible. He and Sara were comfortably swaying together to a song that had proven to be more slow, soulful and sweet.

Although he seemed preoccupied with something other than dancing. When she asked what was on his mind, he merely continued to give Luis a long, hard look that was both inquiring and certain all at once. Then as a few of his prior observations finally gelled with what had just occurred, Grissom realized out loud, "He's got a crush on you."

To which Sara deadpanned, "I hadn't noticed." For it had taken her all of the first two days she had been in camp to work that one out. But then Grissom wasn't always the most adept at reading certain social cues. "Jealous much, Gilbert?" she teased.

He shook his head. "Merely an objective observation."

Sara looked dubious. "Right. Anyway, it's harmless. He's harmless. Reminds me a bit of Dave."

"Hodges?"

"Hell, no," she laughed. "Phillips. He tried to ask me out once. It was sweet actually."

Grissom, who was still rather startled by this admission, said, "And you never mentioned this before because..."

Sara smiled. "While you may deny ever doing it, you do tend to get jealous from time to time. And while you couldn't give Dave dumpster duty for a month --"

"You are never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope," she grinned again which turned to laughter when Grissom adroitly spun her out and then back to him again.

"It's nice actually," he said after a while. "Watching someone else be trailed around like a puppy dog."

"We weren't --" Sara began to protest, but realizing she didn't have a fact to stand on changed her statement to, "Okay, we were all that bad."

"_We_?" he queried.

"Maybe _I_ was that bad."

"No," Grissom replied and it seemed as if he was about to amend the severity of his charges, until he added, "You were worse."

Sara shook her head. "If I recall correctly, you didn't really seem to mind, at least at first."

"For a long time I suppose I was afraid that was all it was."

"A innocent school-girl crush?"

"Yeah. But I think I was more afraid when I discovered it wasn't."

*******

Between the occasion, good food and liberal amounts of beer and _guaro_, by the time midnight had long come and gone, everyone, apart from Grissom and Sara who were not only stone cold sober but accustomed to late nights, was rather flushed, relaxed and sleepy. They began to stumble off to bed, still slightly boisterous and celebratory and looking forward to being able to sleep in the next morning.

Before retiring with her husband, Ana had given Grissom an unexpected hug and kiss on the cheek which flustered him and amused Sara to no end.

Despite the mayhem, music and merriment, Grissom had to admit that it had been a rather peaceful sort of way to spend a Christmas Eve.

"It really is beautiful," Sara whispered in rapt appreciation, still gazing at the little tree, which continued to glisten with its multitude of white lights thanks to the scooter battery Bernie and Luis had brought back with them from town the Saturday before.

Grissom had to agree, particularly at the way those same lights seemed to sparkle in her eyes.

Bernie's radio warbled on. The music shifted.

When Sara scrambled to her feet, Grissom asked, "Bed?" but she shook her head and extended a hand to him instead.

"Dance with me," she murmured, for the music had turned unexpectedly soft and sultry again.

He only smiled and drew her towards him. The heat of one of his palms bled through the thin cotton of her shirt onto the small of her back while the other clasped her hand to his chest. Sara laid her head against his shoulder and sighed as the two of them danced closer than they had dared when the others had been around.

With nothing but the tree light and star shine to light their way, they swayed together long after the initial melody faded away.

Sara snuggled deeper into his embrace, whispering as she did so, "I do love you."

When she felt his grasp tighten around her, she peered up at him and asked with the lilt of a laugh in her voice, "Now who's surprised?"

"It's always been a surprise with you," Grissom confessed.

They were both smiling now, beaming at each other.

Then with a tender sort of seriousness, Sara said, "I do, you know."

He nodded. "I know."

The light, almost playful tone of earlier in the day had given way to something else, something more.

Grissom gently turned her until her back rested against his chest. He slid a hand around her waist, placed a kiss into her hair. Sara leaned forward, the better to expose the curve of her neck and he soon started nuzzling the skin there in the way she'd always savored.

"Gil --" she began as her sigh deepened into a purr of contentment.

Since he hadn't ceased his ministrations, his query of "Hmm…." hummed against her throat.

"That first time when I came over for dinner back at your old townhouse what would have happened if we hadn't been called in?"

Without hesitation, he replied, "I would have probably asked you to stay."

When Sara started and turned to face him, he gave her a bemused smile and whispered, "Not like that dear. But to have you near, to simply be able to feel you, hold you, fall asleep with you..."

"And tonight?" she asked, rather breathless as she waited for his response.

But rather than tell her, he showed her.

"Maybe we should --" she suggested several long moments later.

Grissom nodded. "I'll get the lights."

Continued in _No Need for Mistletoe_.


	12. Twelve: No Need for Mistletoe

**Twelve: No Need for Mistletoe**

_J - remind me to thank you later, as this is all your fault; _

_F - thanks for your... uh... help..._

_*******_

Sara was just about to rest her foot on the camp stool, the better to unlace her boots, when Grissom's warm hands slowly slid around her waist, and the return of his mouth along the nape of her neck punctuated her long sigh of "Gil –"

Reaching back to thread her fingers through his hair, she turned just enough to allow him better access to her lips. Her breath catching in the almost intoxicating kiss that followed, it certainly showed no sign of returning once she felt his fingers begin to edge their way along the bare skin just beneath her t-shirt. His palms pressed her ever nearer.

Wanting to further savor the sensations, she closed her eyes, but with her other senses piqued, from not that far off in the distance, she could discern the radio indifferently announcing the hour.

She groaned, "We forgot to turn off the --"

Grissom's adamant "No, I didn't" left little room to wonder about his present intentions. Although as he had returned his lips and attention to her throat, her "Ah" of comprehension ended up more mouthed than spoken.

And for a while, the two of them were thus breathlessly engaged.

It wasn't until she felt him pop the button on her pants that Sara suddenly realized and remembered.

And swore.

Grissom chuckled, "That really wasn't the response I was hoping for."

Sara shrugged, trying to work out how to best to express what had precipitated her sudden reticence, especially as his "We _have_ done this before," indicated that Grissom believed her reluctance had to do with her having concerns or doubts about renewing the more physical side of their relationship. It didn't.

But before she could even begin to explain, he withdrew and said, as if he thought he might have been a little too insistent, "Honey, it's okay."

Sara grasped his hands hard to halt his retreat. "No, that's not it," she insisted.

And it wasn't. She wanted nothing more than to make love to him again – body and soul. It was just that --

"It's been a while --" she began.

"I know," he smiled.

She gave him another rueful shake of the head, unsure why she was both so embarrassed and nervous all at once. "Not that. I just realized that it's been a while since I've shaved," she reluctantly admitted.

While she wasn't sure what she had expected Grissom's response to her disclosure to be, it certainly wasn't him regarding her chagrin with bemusement and telling her, "Well, that's easily remedied" before hurriedly disappearing off into the darkness. Of what he had ventured off to do, she had no idea. So Sara was genuinely surprised when he reappeared not long after, with a couple of towels draped over one arm, a basin of water in hand and a blithe sort of grin on his face.

He placed the bowl on the bedside table, pausing as he knelt to rummage through his trunk only to observe, "You are definitely overdressed for the occasion, my dear."

Instantly grasping precisely what Grissom had in mind, she gaped. "You're serious?"

When he next peered up at her there was an impish glint in his gaze. "Don't you trust me, Sara?" he asked.

As the last time she had said as much to him she hadn't been wielding a safety razor, it would have been more than a little hypocritical for her to balk at his proposal. Besides, she did trust him – wholeheartedly. It was just his present motives she puzzled over.

"Of course," she stammered. "Of course I do."

"Besides, it's not like I've never shaved your legs before."

Which was true. Several very long months with her left arm immobilized in that cumbersome cast had certainly made it difficult to refuse when Grissom had offered to help her shave her legs.

But this was different. She could tell just from the way he was looking at her that Grissom wasn't offering because it was something that needed to be done, but rather because it was something he sincerely wanted to do. And that look was an expression of his that Sara could seldom, if ever, resist giving into, no matter how seeming strange his suggestions might be.

Plus, Sara knew all too well the futility of continuing to call his plans into question, especially once Grissom had gotten a particular notion stuck firmly in that often determined and sometimes stubborn head of his.

So while she still didn't quite understand his particular reasons for wishing her to do so, she readily complied with his request that she take a seat on one of the towels he had laid out on the bed. Equally without comment she watched him work the laces of her boots free.

After removing her left shoe and sock, Grissom paused to examine the small tattoo on the front of her ankle. Rubbing a thumb over its dark ink, he said, his voice full of both curiosity and longing, "You never have told me the story. Not in all the years we've known each other."

Certainly not immune to the lure of mystique herself, Sara only gave Grissom a playful smirk and a "Perhaps someday" in reply.

He shook his head and sighed, "But not today."

"No," Sara promptly agreed. But then her voice both softened and deepened all at once as she leaned in to say, "But I suppose it never hurts to keep asking."

Their eyes met and Grissom returned her grin before running a nail along her instep. The unexpected tickling sensation led Sara to let out a sharp squeal. He hastily motioned for her to be quiet and cautioned with all the seriousness he could muster, "Or you'll wake everyone," before proceeding to tickle her again without the least sign of contrition.

In response, Sara attempted to look indignant and shot him an _it's all your fault _glare, but was unable to utter any further rebuke as she was far too busy practically purring from pleasure as he had exchange his teasing touch for massaging the soles of her feet.

Pleased at her response, he asked, "Been a while?"

"Far too long."

He continued in his ministrations for a while before reaching up and giving each of her pant legs a firm tug. Sara lifted her hips, the better for him to work them free, and was left to perch herself on the edge of the cot in just her tank top and underwear.

At the long, appreciative look Grissom was giving her the heat began to rise in her cheeks. But he was quick back to business, positioning his reading glasses on the tip of his nose in such a way that Sara had always found winsome.

Then as if he, too, was wanting to prolong the playfulness that had sprung up between them over the course of the last several days, Grissom, after having given her now bare legs a more thorough examination, proceeded to say with a studied sort of nonchalance, "Not planning on having that torrid affair with Luis then?"

Sara rolled her eyes and replied, "No," before giving as good as she got in saying, "Besides, I've never really been into younger men."

Grissom grinned. "So Greg never really had a chance?"

While he had expected her to laugh at the taunt, instead she intoned solemnly, "While youth may have its ardor, age has its advantages."

"Oh?" he asked and waited for her to elaborate.

But she didn't. Instead, Sara said, "If you must know, there wasn't a need for it. The shaving, I mean," she hurriedly clarified. "Only tourists wear shorts and they're certainly not practical out here. And then things have been so busy since you arrived that I honestly didn't even think about it until --"

Grissom's jovial tone gave way to earnestness. "You know it doesn't matter," he said. "Not to me."

Sara nodded. "But --"

"Yeah."

He did however appear to understand why it mattered to her, could apprehend her desire for things to be if not perfect -- as nothing ever was -- then at least as close to it as they could reasonably expect it to be.

Yeah, they had done this before, but not like this. And it had, after all, been a long time.

For while it wasn't as if they hadn't been intimate after Warrick died, those few times had been more about the seeking and granting of comfort than anything, and had ultimately been colored with the knowledge of how fleeting their being together was likely to be.

Tonight was something different. They didn't need to fear interruption. There would be no jangling cell phones, call-ins; no night cut short or having to be up with the dawn. There was just the soft warble of the radio, the lamp lit tempered dark and each other.

And the shaving, Sara knew, wasn't a means to an end, but an end all its own.

For as with most things Gil Grissom ever undertook, there was a slow, steady method to it all, but even in this there existed beneath all of his concentrated diligence a sensuality, evidenced as it was in the way he gently cradled her leg in his hand. In the cool drizzle of water and the warm, almost silky smoothness of the soap he lathered into her skin. There, too, in the slow slide of the razor, the rinse of the water, the brush of the coarse camp towels as they wicked the rest of the dampness away.

That done, at first, it was just his fingers and palms that ran up and down her legs. The touch of which were thrilling enough all on their own, but when his lips and breath began to caress their way up from her ankle and alternate along her shin and the slope of her calf, Sara had to cover her mouth with the back of her hand in order to stifle the long, drawn out moan that still managed to make its way into her nearly breathless query of "What are you doing?"

He broke contact only long enough to reply in his ever matter-of-fact way, "Checking my work."

Sara would have sighed in reply, but Grissom had chosen that moment to progress to the back of her knee and as had happened with the underside of her foot, she squirmed and let out a loud squeal of laughter.

She was about to warn him that _Two can play that game_ but this time her words really were cut off by a sigh as he kissed his way up her inner thigh.

All of this only served to encourage him all the more, so that kiss by kiss, Grissom trailed heat from the thin waist band of her modest white cotton briefs to just below her ribs, taking the time to long linger over working the hem of her t-shirt over the slight curve of her belly that no matter how thin she got, never did quite go away. It was a part of her that Grissom had always admired, having long secretly prized both the softness and roundness of it.

He had begun to nuzzle her nipples through her top when Sara, overwhelmed and needing to catch her breath, if only for a moment, took up his face in her hands and then both gave and took from him a heady kiss that culminated in them fogging up Grissom's reading glasses.

The now unnecessary spectacles having been further rendered quite useless, Sara gently eased them free before placing them on the table. She smiled as she returned her gaze to the man still kneeling before her. His eyes had darkened as they always did. They were his weakest point, she knew. The place where he never could quite conceal his desire.

They were smiling, too, his eyes, as well as his lips.

Ever since he had come, Grissom had been smiling more.

And it was so good to see him smile like that again. See him happy in ways she had almost forgotten and hadn't dared to hope for again, especially as for so long she wasn't sure she ever would. But he was here and smiling now and that was what ultimately mattered.

She leaned forward and kissed him, full and hard and yet gentle all at once, knowing from times previous, that Grissom would ultimately take his cue from her as to how the rest would proceed. So with her lips still on his, Sara pulled him up onto the cot beside her.

Part of her wanted to draw it all out, not just to tease or tempt him, which of course was part of it, but also in order to return the attention he seemed so determined to lavish upon her.

It wasn't long however, before her fingers commenced an attack upon the long line of buttons down his front. But as the kisses grew longer and deeper, hungrier and more desiring, their motions slowed, almost stilled and Grissom, who was typically amused by her often awkward attempts to thus undress him, became uncharacteristically impatient.

For while he did indeed want to savor the process, the sheer overpowering nearness of her made him wish he had worn a polo instead. So as much as he was an avid advocate of patience, he let out an involuntary groan when she fumbled the fifth button with very little grace.

Sara laughed. "In a hurry?" she asked as at last the button slipped free and then urged "Patience," in the same way he had so often done with her.

Although that word held little real weight. For while several buttons still remained, she soon forewent the rest of them, giving his shirt a swift tug from his jeans before chucking it over his head.

Grissom chuckled, more than a little pleased to find that she shared his sense of urgency. That and there was still yet another thing that hadn't changed.

His laughter did not last long. Nor did the urgency.

Sara's expression had turned appreciative, even more so than earlier.

Honestly, that look was something Grissom never did or really ever could comprehend. Despite everyone's assertions that he was absolutely socially oblivious, he had seen similar looks directed at Nick, certainly at Warrick, and even at Greg at times, but he never really considered the possibility that anyone would regard him in that way. He simply had never really thought of himself as attractive, especially not in that particular manner.

When the topic had once come up a few years back between Sara and himself, both of them had been frankly baffled by the notion that they were capable of eliciting powers of physical attraction. Grissom didn't understand her assertions any more now than he had then.

Although at this particular moment, he wasn't all that interested in further contemplation of the matter. Sara had begun to replace the warmth of her gaze with that of her hands, the feel of which as ever rendered thinking of any sort the last thing he really wanted or was able to do.

There had always been something electric about her touch. His very skin hummed with it.

For while her hands were more worn and calloused than they had been in Vegas, he could not help but revel in how she alternated running the smoothness of her fingertips with the firmness of her nails along the full length of his bare back, both in ways that were a far cry from the softly soothingly comforting caresses of the previous days.

He gasped into her mouth with the thrill of it.

"Been too long?" she echoed his earlier query.

To which Grissom offered no response, at least not one with words.

Sara smiled as she pressed a kiss into his shoulder. There was nothing she loved more than the feel of his skin beneath her fingers. That and the way his breath would hitch and catch and emerge as a moan in response.

When a particularly loud, low, rumbling growl reverberated in his chest, she hurriedly shushed him. At his sudden display of umbrage, she mouthed "What?" and then bemused said, "You can tell me to be quiet, but I..."

But Grissom interrupted the rest of her remonstrance with a long, deep kiss that only ended when they both broke away laughing.

Realizing that their laughter might be a little too boisterous for such a late hour, Sara tried to muffle hers in his neck; he buried his amusement into her hair, or tried to. Both were never more grateful for Bernie's radio still droning off in the distance.

The levity, however, soon morphed back into desire.

Feeling flushed and as if she were suddenly wearing way too many clothes, Sara gave her own tank top a tug over her head. Grissom's hands soon settled on her bare stomach then grazed the sensitive skin just below the swell of her breasts before slipping around to reach behind her in order to undo her bra. He hesitated for a moment, confused when he didn't find any clasps.

"New bra?" he asked.

As ever regarding Grissom's strange lack of experience and finesse when it came to the removal of certain feminine undergarments as one of his more endearing traits, Sara gave him an affectionate smile by way of a reply before deftly making short work of removing said bra as well as what remained of the rest of her clothes.

Grissom tugged her close, lingering to luxuriate in the press of her bare skin against his own as he kissed her. Sara drew him beside her onto their makeshift bed. They were a fervent tangle of limbs and hands until she drew back breathless to murmur, "Now who's overdressed?" and took his lack of protest as an invitation to remedy the situation. Which she readily, though a little clumsily, did.

Now with nothing left between them, it became lovemaking in earnest, even if as of yet just barely begun. Lovemaking done with eyes and lips and breath and hands and skin. Inexplicable as it was in the twin sensations of strangeness and familiarity that their years together and months apart had given them. It was an unhurried passion, as if they were both intent on relearning every inch of the other, determined to remap the secret places to kiss and caress that only the two of them had ever known. So that just as they had over the past several days taken the time and care to reacquaint themselves with the other's thoughts and hearts, they were now equally determined to do the same body and soul.

So they did.

For Grissom, after having spent so much of his life surrounded by the sight and sounds, even the smell of things, with Sara like this it was always the taste and feel of her that ultimately overwhelmed him.

Tonight her mouth tasted of sweetness; her skin, the tang of sweat. And beneath his fingers he could feel how her body had changed since they were last like this. The muscles had tightened, tautened with a firmness not of the almost sickly sort of thinness she would sometimes acquire as a result of too much work and too little food and sleep. Instead, he could feel new strength there and pleasured in it.

But even with all the changes and all that yet remained, her body responded even better to his touch than he remembered.

And how he loved to watch the rapture and joy play over her face, the way her eyes would linger shut at the slightest caress.

And Sara, not merely content to delight in his attentions, eagerly returned them in kind, until it all became an ever spirally nearness.

"Gil," she whispered and in that single syllable was the same loving and longing, hoping and having, needing and wanting he was feeling, that Grissom yearned to share again with her.

He gently covered her body with his. Though when her head fell back with a gasp he feared that he'd hurt her. But Sara beamed up at him with an expression born and bred out of far more than desire. Nor could she contain the tender smile that tugged at her lips at the way the lamplight seemed to dance in his bright eyes. But seeing something else crinkling at the edges there, Sara took his face into her hands and smoothed his hair before catching his lips up in a kiss that was no less passionate or desirous than their earlier ones.

For a while neither moved, both breathless in that finally coming together again.

Then her body arched into his as natural as if it hadn't been months since they had been like this. This time, however, it was an intimacy born of hope. Hope in their hands and lips, in their whispers and sighs. And joy, an all-consuming joy, had supplanted the sadness.

Longing for nearness, that utter nearness, she drew him deeper inside her until they were so hopelessly lost -- and found -- in each other.

_I love you_, they each longed to say, but there was barely air enough for breath, let alone words, so eyes and hands and lips had to convey all they could not say.

Besides, they had both long surrendered to the reality that lovemaking had a language all its own. One made up of sighs and moans, kisses and caresses, of heat and warmth and touch and taste that never could quite be translated into thought, let alone spoken into words.

It was being, simply being, even but for those long breathless moments.

It was life.

And it was overwhelming. Had always been overwhelming, this lovemaking as it ever was in the most truest sense of the word. For neither had ever known or loved or been loved like this. Completely. Absolutely.

Except Grissom didn't want to be overcome, not just yet. He tried to focus on her face. On the open mouth kisses where they both tried to stifle their moans. On the feel of her fingers grasping at his arms, along his back, threading themselves through his.

But there was his own name breathy against his skin; hers soon freely tumbled from his lips.

Then only breath.

Not quite yet wanting or willing to forgo the sweet pleasure of the feel of skin on skin, Sara enfolded Grissom to her and held him near until both their breathing began to return to normal.

When they eventually rolled onto their sides to face each other, she tugged the blanket from the end of the bed over them both and they slipped beneath it, snuggled close, fingers and breath and lips still lightly caressing.

While Grissom knew all too well that they should probably get dressed and soon, privacy being as at a high a premium as it always was here, he was enjoying the brush of her bare skin against his own far too much not to want to give into the temptation to linger ever longer.

Soon, a satisfied sort of sleepiness stole over them. Curled up, still connected as they were, unbothered by the rush and buzz of the insects and the world around them, they continued to make love in whispers, then dreams.


	13. Thirteen: No Time Like the Present

Continued from _No Need for Mistletoe_.

**Thirteen: No Time Like the Present**

"Gil..."

At the sound of his name so softly spoken in that long, low, drawn out way as only Sara ever did, Grissom started to stir, but it wasn't until the warm press of her mouth against the sensitive spot just beneath his left ear, that he really roused.

While he certainly relished the attention, he groaned at having been woken from a very sound sleep and whispered drowsily, "Go back to sleep, honey. We don't have to work today. It's --"

"Christmas," Sara finished brightly.

"Early," he countered. After a while, he reluctantly hazarded to open his eyes, blinked and murmured still sleepily, "You know, I'm not sure about this whole you as a morning person thing. You are far too awake for..."

He squinted and lifted his head from the pillow in order to attempt to better judge from the way the sunshine streamed through the edges of the tent flaps the time, but finding himself not quite conscious enough for the task, he decided instead to ask, "What time is it exactly?"

"As they just played the Costa Rican national anthem on the radio a few minutes ago," Sara replied, "not long after seven. By the way," she said, and he could hear the amusement in her voice, "I think we owe Bernie new batteries."

Grissom couldn't dispute this. "Probably," he readily agreed. Especially as he had been the one who'd left the radio on for the night and not because he had absentmindedly forgotten to turn it off, but had rather intentionally left it playing in an attempt at some level of discretion.

"Did you say _seven_?" he asked after a moment's pause.

"Yeah."

Normally by seven, camp would be a rush of noise and chaos with everyone preparing to get ready to start work, but apart from the sounds of the radio, there was just stillness. It seemed that the others were still sleeping off the celebration of the night before.

"Then come back to bed," Grissom said, tugging the sheet tighter around him. "It's way too early to be awake."

"I am in bed," Sara laughed. "Besides, it's Christmas."

"You said that already," he replied, unsure why Sara was so suddenly excited about the whole thing. She seemed as psyched as a kid – well, a kid at Christmas. But she'd certainly never displayed this level of enthusiasm for the holiday before. The previous Christmases they'd shared had passed with little fanfare. Apart from last year, they had both worked every one that he could remember.

Perhaps that explained it. This was their first Christmas together that they hadn't. Although he wasn't entirely sure that quite excused her exuberance at this hour. For while it wasn't exactly _early_ in any literal sense of the word, he knew it had to have been closer to three by the time the two of them had finally fallen asleep, which meant it certainly felt early.

However, his musings over Sara's abrupt change in behavior didn't last long. As he stopped thinking -- and breathing -- the moment she swept her closely cropped nails over his bare shoulder and then down his spine before her hand edged beneath the sheet. Instinctively, his body arched into her touch and instantly, Grissom was now very much awake and utterly unconcerned about sleep.

He sighed with more amusement than rue, "You're insatiable, dear."

Sara made no reply to this. Instead, she leaned in and breathed into his ear, "I have something for you."

At this, he did roll over to face her.

She pursed her lips, shook her head at the suggestive way he was peering up at her. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Gilbert," she chided him. Then said as she laid a small package on his chest, "You aren't the only one entitled to feel celebratory."

He sat up, the better to examine the brown paper wrapped box and found that the front bore the address of his apartment back in Vegas.

Sara shrugged. "You're also not the only one guilty of having things never make it into the mail," she said. "I'm kind of glad though. I have the feeling it just might come in handy."

The package had a very familiar sort of heft to it as he weighed it in his hands, so Grissom wasn't all that surprised to find that when he peeled back the paper, it was to reveal a small, thick volume about the size of a large paperback. Not only had he and Sara exchanged quite a few books over the years, choosing just the right one for him turned out to be a particular talent of Sara's.

Except this book was different from the others.

Grissom ran his palm along the spine. Its leather-like binding enveloped more than just contained the pages. He slipped the twists in the cord tying the book together free and noted that the blank pages inside had an unfamiliar texture and coloring to them.

"It's banana," offered Sara. "The paper. Made from what's left over after they harvest the fruit. Not a trace of tree in the whole thing. Just the stuff that nobody wants and normally gets thrown away. Now it's turned into something both useful and beautiful."

His tone more curious than anything Grissom asked, "Is that meant to be symbolic?"

She hadn't thought about it that way. "No," Sara finally replied with a slight shake of the head. "I just thought it was cool."

He returned her lopsided grin before thumbing through the quarto-sized sheets until he reached the frontispiece. Here a single sentence was scrawled in Sara's ever-untidy hand. He squinted and had to extend his arm. Sara laughed and reached over to hand him his reading glasses.

After he had slipped them on she said, "Better?"

"Now I just have to decipher your handwriting," he teased.

But his expression turned serious, almost somber as he read:

_Always remember it is of possibilities and not absence that blank pages speak._

The words seemed rather apt, all things considered.

Grissom lingered over them for a while, not sure which he appreciated most: the gift itself, that she had intended to send it or the sentiment it contained. Ultimately though, it really didn't matter.

He kissed her gently, held her close. "Thank you," he murmured into her ear.

His eyes closed and his grasp tightened when she brushed her lips against his cheek, and he knew it was time. That this was the moment. The right moment.

So he took a deep breath as he pulled away.

"I, uh, actually have something for you, too," he began. "I saw it in a market in San José while I was waiting for the bus and thought of you."

Although true, that wasn't it, not nearly even the half of it.

He leaned over the edge of the cot to pull out his trunk and soon unearth a small cloth-covered bundle from beneath his pile of shirts. When he settled back onto the mattress beside her, Sara was stunned to see him displaying the same sort of nervous mien he had that afternoon when he'd first arrived.

As he handed his own gift to her, he supplied by way of explanation, "They didn't have any wrapping paper."

Sara carefully eased the knot holding the colorful cloth together. As she unfolded the fabric, she could see why it had been so carefully wrapped. Obviously, Grissom hadn't wanted to scuff or damage the wooden box inside.

Although it wasn't just any box. Sara had seen similar ones during her jaunts to town and recognized it as a Costa Rican puzzle box, the whimsical cousin to the more famous Japanese varieties. The Tico versions were frequently fashioned with various sorts of colored wood into a wide variety of animal shapes.

That morning in San José, Grissom had poured over the display of boxes, thinking that if he could find the right one, it would be just the thing and would provide, too, the perfect excuse for him to stop hemming and hawing and just give her the one valuable thing he had brought along with him.

And then he'd seen it. It wasn't nearly as large or ornate as most of the rest for sale, but the butterfly-shaped box inlaid with all the richness of rose and ironwood, Jatobá and Caribbean pine was perfect.

Judging from Sara's appreciation, it appeared that he had made the right choice. For a long while, she could do nothing more than admire the box as she gently turned it over and over in her hands, her curiosity rising as she did so since she couldn't make out any hinges or latches or other obvious methods for opening it.

As it was more out of anticipation than impatience that he said, "Want a hint?" she nodded. "First," he began, "you have to find the key. It's the part that holds it all together. It won't open any other way."

While he watched her examine the pieces, trying them one by one, he thought about telling her that she had been his key. Not just the person who had unlocked the very heart of him, but also the center that helped him hold everything together. That she was the piece that completed him.

But all those words sounded clichéd, conventional, overworked, inelegantly sentimental and despite the fact that Grissom knew he was and had always been a better scholar than a poet, he did not feel like borrowing someone else's words, not today, not for this. So he only hoped his actions would speak for themselves, that she would understand, like she so often did.

He reached over and tugged on an apparently innocuous looking piece in the center and the box came open in her hands.

Sara sighed at the apparent ease of the solution.

"It's quite simple, once you know the key," he said.

"And you worked that out all on your own?" she asked, both looking and sounding impressed.

While he was tempted just to nod, as honesty was usually the best policy, he shook his head and told her, "I had the guy who sold it show me how. Just in case."

"Ah."

Slightly ruefully, Grissom replied, "See, explanations always spoil the magic of a thing."

Sara wasn't quite sure about that, particularly when she peeked inside and discovered the box wasn't empty. Her eyes went wide and she let out an involuntary gasp.

Grissom was saying, "While the box is for Christmas, what's inside..." before his voice trailed off. He took another deep breath before continuing. "It was my grandmother's," he said. "I know it's probably a little old fashioned --"

"It's beautiful," Sara interjected, admiring the delicate filigree work on the ring's narrow band and the pale blue of the single recessed aquamarine stone.

But Grissom didn't appear to have heard her, for he was saying almost breathlessly now and all in one go, "And I know you can't really wear it out here, but I wanted you to have it. I meant to give it to you sooner. I mean even before. Ever since that day with the bees really. There just never seemed the moment. I guess I... I was just hoping that it wasn't too late or too early..."

"Gil," she said softly, touching his cheek to still him, then added with a watery though wide grin, "And I thought I was the one who had problems over-talking when I was nervous." She kissed him before he could do anything more than smile sheepishly. "Besides, there's no reason for you to be nervous."

He met her eyes at this. Sara beamed.

"The answer's still yes."

He returned her kiss wholeheartedly.

As she pulled away, Grissom gave her a steadier, surer smile. "That was a lot more enthusiastic response than I got from Nicole Daly."

Sara frowned. "Who?"

"The last person I tried to give it to," he replied evenly, but when her face seemed to darken, Grissom laughed, "It was second grade, Sara. We were nine. And my mother made me get the ring back."

Still a little nonplussed, Sara said, "You asked a girl to marry you when you were in second grade?"

He nodded. "The first, last and only time. Before you, of course." As she was still looking incredulous, he added, "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I liked bugs. She liked bugs. Turns out she drew the line at dead things."

At this, Sara couldn't help but chuckle; Grissom didn't seem the least bit bothered by her amusement.

"I never got to ask you," he said after a while. "There wasn't an attribution to your inscription. Who's it from? I know it's not Wilde or Shakespeare, Emerson or Thoreau."

"Sidle," Sara supplied succinctly. "And as for not being able to wear it out here, you just have to think outside the box, Gil," she quipped and from a small tin from a corner of her own trunk, she drew out a necklace that Grissom recognized as one he had given her a few years before. She slid the pendant from the chain and replaced it with the ring. "Would you --" she said extending the ends to him.

He did up the clasp, lingering for a moment to softly nuzzle her neck once he was done. When she turned back to face him, he could see that the ring had come to rest just above her heart.

The perfect place, they both thought.

He smiled at her. She looked so lovely that morning with her hair mussed as it so often was first thing after waking from lovemaking. He loved it like that, with its hint of messiness that didn't need to be tempered. That and he knew it was a sight just for him to see.

It was then that he noticed that Sara was still perched on her side of the bed, with one bare leg curled in front of her while the other rested on the floor, dressed only in the shirt he had been wearing the night before. The cuffs on the sleeves, which he had rolled up to his elbows, hung almost down to her wrists and while the two bottom buttons were still fastened as they had been earlier and she had done up the forth one herself, she hadn't it seemed, bothered with the rest so that ultimately the shirt revealed more than it concealed.

Not that Grissom was about to object. Tease, yes, object, no.

"You back to appropriating my shirts again?" he said, fingering the collar with one hand, while his eyes were occupied a little lower.

Neither oblivious nor immune to his gaze, Sara said with a smirk, "Complaining?"

He shook his head. "No, but then you've always looked beautiful in blue," he replied as his other hand began to inch its way up her bare thigh.

"You keep doing that," Sara warned, "and I won't be wearing anything."

Gil Grissom rather grinned at the possibility.

Sara laughed. "Why do I have the feeling you have no intention of going back to bed?"

"You taken up mind reading lately, my dear?"

She shook her head and replied, "No mind reading necessary in this case."

"Oh?"

Sara reached up and drew the glasses from his nose. "Don't you know, Gil," she murmured. "It's always your eyes that give you away."

He seemed to be quietly considering this possibility, before he leaned in, pausing when his lips were mere millimeters from hers to say, "Actually, I _am_ planning on going back to bed. Just not to sleep."

And it wasn't long before Sara turned out to be as good as her word when it came to his shirt.

*******

When exactly the two of them finally slipped out from beneath the sheets where they had long been silently snuggled together and dozing, neither of them knew. But they were surprised to find that no matter how late it must have been, they were still the first ones up and about that Christmas morning.

So it was as quietly as they could that they set about showering and getting ready for the day.

They met up in the kitchen. Sara started on the coffee while Grissom searched out something to make to eat that didn't require too much time spent in front of the stove during the heat of the day before he finally settled on making fruit-filled crepes.

As Sara cut up some of the ripe mangoes that Grissom had brought back the day before, she found she had to fight back a grin for he was absently humming the "Habanera" from Bizet's _Carmen_. There was just something incongruous about what she knew to be the cause of his sudden tunefulness and his apparent choice of song, especially as the tune effectively espoused the dangerously intractable nature of love and was from an opera were love indeed proved to be deadly in the end.

But she seriously doubted if either were a conscious decision on Grissom's part. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it. He hadn't before, when not too long after their relationship had first become physically intimate he'd begun the habit. It hadn't happened that often, but from time to time, he could thereafter be heard humming to himself around the lab.

The behavior hadn't exactly gone unnoticed. But Grissom, as everyone knew, was peculiar, or at least prone to sometimes strange and peculiar habits displayed at the strangest of times for seemingly no reason at all. So while their erstwhile colleagues might have been curious, they had long stopped seriously speculating over most of Grissom's peculiarities. This was Grissom after all, and Grissom sometimes was just Grissom. And as much as they might shake their heads at him from time to time, Sara knew that for the most part, they preferred him that way.

Sara, having been privy to what had been going on, had easily made the connection, but had no reason to -- and every reason not to -- clue the others in, or Grissom himself, for that matter.

So she knew better than to worry.

If he started singing, now that would be another matter entirely.

*******

It was a little after noon before the others showed up. Ana and Stephen emerged looking well-rested, unfazed and merry in their own way. Bernie, Luis and Bridget looked anything but when they stumble in bleary-eyed and obviously well hungover, proving that youth and alcoholic indiscretions didn't always go well together.

"Looks like you weren't joking about the _guaro_," Grissom noted with a grin.

*******

It was more out of shock and chagrin at having been caught staring at Sara, that Grissom started when a quiet voice behind him said, "There is nothing more beautiful than a woman in love."

But upon realizing that it was Stephen who had joined him at the table, Grissom knew he had little cause to feel or fear either.

So he merely nodded wordlessly in agreement. For he honestly hadn't been able to resist. Sara's hair was still damp from her earlier shower and the humidity had heightened her curls, but that wasn't it.

She was, he could find no other way to describe it, _aglow_ in a way he hadn't seen since that afternoon with the bees all those months ago. Even her eyes flickered brighter and seemed to crinkle at their edges in a sort of perpetual smile.

"It only gets worse," Stephen was saying. "After all these years, I still find myself stopping to watch Ana do the most ordinary of things."

As he was just starting to grasp precisely how that went, Grissom smiled.

It felt strange, though not in a bad way, to talk about such things. Different than it had been in Vegas. There having been caught staring at Sara too long would have necessitated explanations and precipitated embarrassment.

It wasn't that their relationship had been a secret exactly, though the others probably had regarded it as such. He and Sara certainly hadn't been public about the whole thing. It had just been private. Although after he had come back from Massachusetts it was to discover that it was suddenly a whole lot harder for him to keep his personal life with her separate from his professional one.

But here, the personal and private didn't have to be separate. Almost couldn't be.

"How long have you been married?" Grissom asked.

To which Stephen readily replied, "Ten years this coming May."

_Ten years._ Grissom thought back on his own life ten years ago. Back then he was still deluding himself into believing that any interest he had in one Sara Sidle was purely professional. It was a lie that had become a whole lot harder to convince himself of once she had come to Vegas and he begun to see her every day.

"I came down to work on my dissertation for a summer," said Stephen. "Found it hard to go back once the study season was over. It wasn't more than seven weeks before I was back on a plane to San José."

Grissom had to shake his head at this, not at Stephen, but at himself. It had taken him seven long _years _to gather enough courage to do anything when it came to Sara. Those were among the choices and decisions he most regretted in his life -- all of his _can'ts_ and _couldn'ts_ and _laters_. But he was here now and there was their future together to think about and look forward to.

"Never did finish that thesis," Stephen was saying airily. "It was worth it though."

As he continued to watch Sara, Grissom had to agree. _Yes, it's more than worth it. _

*******

Sara was helping Ana put out the plates for dinner that night. Bernie, with the help of Luis, was attempting to reheat the leftovers from the day before without burning anything. It was beginning to look like a lost cause. But Ana insisted that the young men would never learn otherwise and Sara, having burnt her own share of dinners over the years, understood and agreed in principle if not in actuality. She'd been privileged to have had far too many of Grissom's home-cooked meals to particularly relish the thought of having to eat carbonized anything.

As she had never had them before, Ana was asking Sara about the crepes Grissom had served for brunch earlier that day. Sara explained they really were simple to make, not too much different than tortillas, just sweet rather than savory, although you could make savory crepes as well. Grissom had made them for her on numerous occasions.

Sara's explanations done, Ana sighed appreciatively, "He's certainly handy to have around."

"He has his moments," Sara readily concurred.

Then Ana's eyes went wide. "He..." she began. "You... You two are..." she stammered and Sara wasn't sure what had so suddenly astonished the normally unflappable Ana until she noticed that the ring she had tucked into her shirt earlier that day had slipped free and into plain sight.

All Sara could do was smile in reply. Ana nodded knowingly. Then after a moment, Sara turned to her and said, "Could you not mention it to the others just yet. It's uh..."

"Secret?" Ana asked.

But before Sara could answer, Grissom came up behind them and said, "What's secret?"

Sara gestured to the ring.

"Is it?" he asked. To which, Sara merely gave him an inquisitive look.

Ana, sensing a private conversation might need to be in order, muttered something about checking to see what Stephen had gotten up to and left the two of them at the table.

"Well?" Grissom asked once Ana was gone. "Is it secret?"

Sara thought about it for a moment, considered what it meant for the ring and all the talk about marriage to be public, as she hadn't told anyone the first time Grissom had asked her to marry him. She doubted Grissom had either. At least not in such a public way. That he didn't seem to mind now, while it puzzled her, pleased her as well.

"I guess not," she replied.

He leaned into say, "You're not my secret either, Sara." She smiled at this.

"Besides," he added, "we both know there is no such thing as private here. At some point they will all work it out."

"True," Sara conceded. "But you do realize that they are all going to think that you've just proposed."

Grissom shrugged. "Let them think what they want."

"Are you planning on telling anyone else?" she asked, not merely just curious as to the answer.

"You mean back in Vegas?"

"Yeah." Although she was thinking, _No, Gilbert, back on Mars,_ but the surety in his next words effectively silenced any further thoughts of sarcasm.

"Of course," he said.

"And say what exactly?"

Grissom gave her nothing but an enigmatic grin in reply.

*******

"I don't get it," Bridget was saying to Ana as the two women finished up the dinner dishes.

Ana followed the young woman's bewildered gaze. Grissom and Sara were sitting together at the table apparently intent on pouring over a page from one of Stephen's puzzle books. It was an absolutely ordinary activity and yet not, Ana thought.

To her, the _it_ was obvious, so was the love.

Its presence hadn't surprised her in the slightest. For while Gil Grissom had been polite, professional and appropriately reserved when he had written to her several weeks before to inquire after Sara, Ana knew there was nothing polite, professional or reserved in any way about Grissom's feelings for Sara.

But then, she thought, how much had she known, really known and understood about love when she was Bridget's age? Little really. And in her experience, Ana had found that love was something that only time and circumstance could make fathomable -- and even then...

So she turned to Bridget and said, "Don't get what?"

"How he," Bridget replied, gesturing to Grissom, "can still be single. There has to be something wrong with him. He's intelligent, articulate, successful, can cook, cleans, is good looking enough for his age..."

At this, Ana had to bite back a retort. True, she supposed that Grissom was old enough to be Bridget's father, but Ana wouldn't have regarded him as _old_ by any means. He wasn't all that much older than she was really, seven maybe eight years.

But Bridget was sighing, "I just don't get it."

Ana for her part only smiled knowingly and said, "I don't think he'll be single for too much longer."

_Oh?_ Bridget's inquiring expression seemed to say. Obviously, she hadn't noticed the ring at dinner that night.

"You ever have a man come thousands of miles just to be with you?" Ana asked in return.

Bridget shook her head rather rueful. "No. You?"

"Once."

"And?"

"I married him of course."

To be continued in _Up a Tree._


	14. Fourteen: Up a Tree

**Fourteen: Up a Tree**

The Friday after Christmas brought with it a return to the regular routine. Although Grissom hadn't been there quite long enough for things to really have yet settled much into habit. As for Sara, Grissom's mere presence there with her had soon managed to turn even everyday life extraordinary.

That particular day began ordinarily enough. Chores. Breakfast. The allotment of daily assignments. There had been the now customary kiss farewell and the _have a nice day at work_ before the two of them parted ways. Sara was helping Stephen finish up marking out the last of the new plot, while Grissom and the two young Ticos were out to set the latest bunch of bait traps. Sara had regarded Grissom's effusive enthusiasm for proverbial _dung duty_ to be more than a little bemusing, and yet so Grissom all at once.

She was in the process of importing a series of coordinates into the computer when there was the sudden rustle of foliage. Sara, still not quite inured to the various sounds of the forest, peered skyward, thinking perhaps a troop of howlers or a large toucan had decided to put in an appearance. But the intrusion came from ground level and in the form of Bernie, who was so flush and obviously flustered that when he began to rattle off in such rapid Spanish Sara was only able to catch Grissom's name and the word _hurry._ But it was the fact that all the while he didn't dare look at her that started her heart pounding. Stephen although seeming to understand didn't bother to take the time to explain and only motioned for her to go with Bernie and quickly.

By the time Sara arrived in front of the tent she and Grissom shared, she was wide-eyed and white with worry. Ana met her there, but before Sara could even ask, Ana put a soothing hand on her shoulder and said, "It's okay. He's okay.

"Nothing appears broken. But we'll have the doctor in town do some x-rays tomorrow just in case. He'll be sore for a while and bruise later, but for right now, it's mostly just some scrapes and cuts."

And then with a reassuring smile Ana suggested that Sara go in and see him.

As much as she wanted to do so, Sara was still confused as to what had exactly occurred, since both she and Bernie had been far too breathless for speech. She was about to first insist on an explanation when Ana briskly excused herself on the pretext of going to fetch an ice pack and locate something to help with the pain and swelling.

So Sara was left on her own to take a long, deep, calming breath before venturing inside. She found Grissom propped up on the pillows, his shirt undone, looking a little rumpled, but not too much the worse for wear.

As he met her eyes, he tried to give her a casual smile, but Sara knew Grissom well enough to know better. She'd been around for enough of his migraines to recognize when his grins were just for show. So she didn't return it. Instead, she just stood there, not quite certain what to say or do or even sure of what precisely was going on.

But then Ana soon returned with a steaming cup in one hand and a chemical ice pack in the other. She put the cup down on the bedside table simply saying, "_Maracujá_."

"Passion flower tea," Grissom acknowledged with a knowing nod. "A natural analgesic."

Despite the distinct unreality of it all, Sara discovered she couldn't quite help but be amused at the fact that Grissom's ready response didn't seem to faze Ana in the least. Apparently, it hadn't even taken a week for Ana to get used to Grissom's seemingly limitless supply of ready knowledge.

"It'll make you sleepy," Ana was saying, "but then right now rest is best," and handed Grissom the towel wrapped ice pack.

_Rest?_ Yeah right, that prescription was going to go over oh so well, Sara thought.

The last time she'd known Grissom to be sick -- and walking pneumonia was no joke -- he'd ended up working pretty much through the whole thing. Of course that hadn't entirely been his fault. Sara knew that Deputy District Attorney Maddy Klein was not a woman to take no for an answer. But still, he'd been lucky not to land himself in the hospital.

Not that Sara was herself a particular fan of having to be stuck in bed for hours on end. At least not being stuck in bed alone, and certainly not because she was sick or injured.

But he voiced no protest, not even after Ana decreed in an imperious tone Sara had seldom heard anyone use to address Grissom, "No more tree climbing." The seriousness and the stricture however softened as she added, "At least not for a few weeks," before brushing her hands off on her pants and turning to go.

Both Grissom and Sara were suddenly intent on following her retreat. It wasn't until they were sure she was out of earshot, that they returned their attentions to each other.

Sara's stiffened, one hand tense on her hip, as she peered down at him.

While not what she had intended to say, the first words out of her mouth were: "Tree climbing? What the _hell_ were you thinking?" But before he could even attempt to reply, she plowed on with: "Seriously, Gil. Do I even want to know what you were doing up _in_ the tree in the first place?"

Grissom shrugged. "Actually, I was never _in_ the tree. I fell off the ladder while I was trying to get _into_ the tree."

Sara rolled her eyes. "Bullshit semantics and you know it," she replied testily. "Just tell me you weren't doing it in some foolish attempt to keep up with Bernie and Luis."

There was the instinctive tilt of the head and the raise of a critical eyebrow before Grissom said, more acerbic than curious, "Are you insinuating that I couldn't?"

She gave a humorless half-laugh. "I know I can't."

"No, I wasn't," he intoned solemnly and the said. "It was _Pseudomyrmex ferruginea."_

At this seeming non sequitur, she said, "What?"

"The reason I was interested in the tree," Grissom explained. "It was an acacia and home to an impressive colony of _Pseudomyrmex _ants_."_

"Ants?" Sara echoed.

She should have known, she rued with an exasperated shake of the head.

"Yeah. Textbook case of mutualism. The ants guard the tree from anyone or anything that might attack it. They even go so far as to destroy any nearby plants to help cut down on the competition for light. In return, the tree provides a sweet, energy-rich nectar for them to feed on and their large, hollow horn-like thorns serve for shelter. I was trying to see if I could locate one of the brood or queen's chambers."

"And you couldn't have had one of the guys look for you?"

"I wanted to see it for myself."

At this, she gave a reluctant, yet comprehending nod. "Of course you did. But don't you think you are a little..." she began, but stopped. Grissom narrowed his eyes as if to dare her to complete the sentence. "I mean when was the last time you climbed a tree?" she finally asked.

Without the slightest hint of hesitation he replied, "1988. It was an oak and twenty below outside so the tree had iced over. Not unusual for Minneapolis in the middle of winter. The wind had blown some evidence off a balcony and into the tree and someone had to go and get it and I was still relatively new at the time…" At the baffled look Sara was giving him at this dispassionate recitation, he said, "Everyone has to be the low man on the totem pole at some point. Some of us more than once," he added with a slight smile. "Besides, I used to do it all the time when I was a kid."

"Busy looking for bugs then, too?"

As if the answer were obvious, Grissom made no reply.

Sara sighed heavily. "You're mother must have had the patience of Job."

This time, that trace of a smile grew. "Whenever she caught me at it, she'd tell me she never wanted to see me do it ever again."

"So you didn't?"

He shook his head no and replied with an unstudied nonchalance, "I just made sure to do it when she wasn't around."

This unexpected revelation caused Sara to snicker, "Gil Grissom the rebel. I have a hard time picturing that." But then the more she thought about it... "Actually," she replied, "maybe I don't."

Grissom for his part had suddenly gotten that far off distant look that often accompanied his private musings and had always left Sara wondering what stories he had yet to tell her. There were probably years worth of them. Although obviously today wasn't the day he'd planned on sharing, for he said rather rueful himself now, "I have to admit, certain things are a lot harder at fifty-two than I remember them being at thirty-two."

"Like climbing trees?" Sara supplied wryly.

He chose to ignore this and instead said, "It definitely changes your perspective on certain things."

He could tell she was pursing her lips in order not to smile. "Such as gravity?"

"Well, Newton was right: _What goes up must come down_."

How quintessentially Grissom, Sara thought. She gestured to the mug on the bedside table. "You better drink that before it gets cold."

He barely made it through the first sip without making a face.

"Not to your liking?"

"Not really."

She leaned over to take a whiff. "It smells like stewed grass."

"Tastes like it," Grissom replied, but without a single further comment or complaint, drank it down to the dregs anyway.

Indicating his right hand where a bright bandana cinched tight about the palm, she asked, "What's this?"

"I tried to catch myself."

"On the acacia?"

He nodded sheepishly. "As it turns out, yes."

"That was smart."

For a not so brief moment Grissom really did fervently wish that sarcasm could be banned from sickrooms.

Anyway, technically speaking, there really hadn't been any thinking involved. Not in that instant when he felt his footing on the ladder slip. It had been instinct that had caused him to reach out. Of course that instinct hadn't done anything to save him. He still ended up sprawled on his side in the underbrush with a gash on his palm and a multitude of unhappy ants swarming all over his hand.

"I see you got bit, too," Sara was saying as she studied the many clusters of nasty white welts that surrounded the angry red punctures.

"Occupational hazard," he deadpanned.

"Uh huh. Hurt much?"

At this, he amended his earlier thoughts on the banning of sarcasm to broaden the injunction to also include the unnecessarily pointing out of the obvious. Not because he was actually irritated with Sara, but because he couldn't rightly refute her claims.

Rather, he sardonically rejoined, "Not as bad as bullet ants."

"So named because their sting feels like you've been shot by a bullet?"

"Or wish you had."

Her next question sounded far more scientific than sympathetic. "Personal experience?"

Grissom gave a short shake of the head as he said, "Thankfully not."

Sara made no further inquiry, focused as she was on working the knot on the bandana free until she had carefully eased the fabric away from the wound. She momentarily blanched at the deep, jagged gash she found there.

"I doubt steri strips are going to be of much help," she said having soon regained her composure. "But we need to get that sealed up. I can put some temporary stitches in to last until we get you into the doctor. Or I can get Ana to do it, if you'd prefer."

"I trust you," he said and meant it.

Sara nodded. "I'll be right back -- honey."

Grissom started slightly as that wasn't an endearment Sara used with him all that often. Besides, from the stiffness that had begun to settle over her mien and posture, he seriously doubted that affectionate was what she was feeling right now.

She seemed to note his confusion, for she said, "Honey, you know the stuff bees make. Best known for its sweetening properties, but sadly and unjustly little appreciated as a natural antibiotic and antiseptic."

"Right," he replied, recalling having once told her as much. He watched Sara go, part of his mind still trying to work out exactly how he had managed to get himself into this mess in the first place.

But he remembered little apart from the initial jerk of the slip, the rip of the skin along his hand and the rapid rush as the ground came up to meet him. There was the vague memory of not being able to move for what felt like a very long time. The sound of voices. Whether actually before that or after he couldn't be quite sure. Nor was he certain how he had gotten back to camp.

Grissom had chosen not to tell Sara any of this. Principally, because he had never seen her look as pale and worried as she had the moment she stepped through the tent flaps. Thankfully, the color had quickly returned to her cheeks. Although he was astute enough to realize that it was probably more out of rancor than relief.

He wasn't sure when it had all become so horribly serious. But he could tell she was upset. Knew she was, and that this was likely to be one of Sara's slow boils, where instead of growing louder and more expressive in her anger, she would go quieter, colder. Grissom knew, too, that there was nothing more deafening than Sara's silences.

The problem was, even after all the years, he still hadn't worked out a way to deal with, let alone diffuse them.

Then all too soon it seemed, she was back with the honey, water and the camp medical kit.

He tried not to hiss from the pain as she carefully cleansed the wound and was infinitely grateful that she hadn't been stingy with the numbing agent before she set to stitching.

But the discomfort had been disconcerting enough that his query of "Do I really want to know where you learned how to do this?" slipped out before he'd even realized what he was implying.

But Sara only said, "Hank?" with those tightly pursed lips again before replying, "No. Dave gave me some pointers."

Whether it was the nerves or the twinge that accompanied each stitch, Grissom couldn't seem to keep himself from saying, "I'm beginning to think that you and Dave were awfully chummy."

His cheek was rewarded by a particularly firm poke.

A little late, he decided that perhaps it was a better idea for him to keep his commentary to himself, at least until Sara no longer was wielding a needle and scissors in her hands.

He did have to admit that she was rather adept at the work. When she'd finished, he ran his thumb along the threads. The neat row of stitches wasn't pretty per se, but if her technique had been refined under Dave's tutelage, that wasn't surprising. Dead bodies weren't known to be particular when it came to how their seams looked.

Sara was silent, too, as she slathered the wound with liberal amounts of honey before covering it with a loose dressing of gauze and tape. She had just finished putting the remains of which back in their proper places in the kit when Grissom reached for her left hand and slowly eased it over until it was palm up.

His thumb caressed the thin, almost imperceptible line that was all that remained from the injury she had sustained during the lab explosion more than five years previous. By now, if a person hadn't already known it was there, they'd never notice the scar. But Grissom wasn't likely to forget its presence any more than the events that had come after.

The faint feel of it, even if perhaps mostly imagined, had long been for him a source of regret. Not for the injury itself, but for the hurt he had caused Sara by not telling her the truth that night, the real why he couldn't have dinner with her.

While he certainly hadn't known what to do about the two of them, he had then yet to realize that sometimes it was okay not to know. But his fear and ignorance had only served to drive an even deeper wedge between him and Sara for years and he had long lamented all that time he could never have back.

But with time, as well as with the warmth of that hand in his, in the grasp of it when she pulled him closer to deepen a kiss, in the feel of it against his bare skin, he discovered there was still plenty of joy and love yet to be found. More than a lifetime's worth.

And he hadn't been too late.

Back in the dim confines of the tent, a stray strand had fallen over Sara's face. As Grissom went to brush it back behind her ear, his breath caught in his throat with a loud rasp that seemed to startle her back into life again.

Or at least into action.

Initially, her fingers gingerly edged their way up the line of his cervical vertebrae until they reached the base of his skull, the feel of which caused his eyes to involuntarily shut. For while he hadn't hit his head in the course of his fall, he'd somehow managed to acquire a beastly headache and her touch, as it so often did, helped to ease the tight knot of tension there.

But when her palm slid across his collar bone and over his right shoulder blade, he was quick to recognize that it was not meant as a soft, soothing caress intent on conferring comfort, but instead bore all the cool, clinical, almost detached air of impersonal examination.

It wasn't until she began to test the range of motion in his shoulder and elbow that he started to protest, "Ana already checked..." but had to stop as the discomfort effectively cut off his ability to speak properly.

Besides, Sara only insisted, "I want to see for myself."

As tempted as he was, Grissom knew better than to try and prevent her. In any case, he was too busy blinking back tears of pain. Although he did let out an almost cross, "_Sara_," when she began to probe along his ribs with what he regarded as far more forcefulness than really necessary. It was already hard enough to breathe as it was. Of course, he wasn't about to admit that.

But his gasp of "I'm fine, really," sounded so feeble and false even to his own ears that he wasn't in the least surprised when Sara didn't seem to buy this assurance.

Not even when she asked, her voice rather terse, "Since when have you become a medical doctor, Gilbert?" was there a pause in her physical evaluation.

And while he might have briefly considered asking her the same thing, even he wasn't that stupid.

He was relieved however, that it wasn't too much longer before she seemed to be satisfied with her inspection and replaced her hands with the ice pack and an insistent admonition for him to breathe.

Apart from the obvious tenderness, he really was okay. Nothing was broken, he was just badly bruised.

When she told him as much, Grissom brusquely replied, "I believe that was Ana's diagnosis."

Abruptly, Sara rose from where she had been perched on the edge of the bed. "Perhaps you should have fallen on your head," she said, the hostility heavy in her voice, "it would have done the least damage."

The silence that followed her words was so absolute that it seemed as if the whole world had suddenly been placed on mute.

Grissom watched her face fall, the thin line of her mouth tauten and her eyes harden.

But before he could heave words, any words at all, into his mouth, she had turned away and said in a crisp, cool tone, "That tea should be kicking in any minute now. I'm going to go get cleaned up before the others get back," and strode out without even stopping to collect any clean clothes.

It had been his dogged insistence that he was _okay_, that everything was _fine_ which had ultimately been the last straw. Sara knew Grissom was trying to hide the extent of his pain and injuries from her. So instead of ameliorating her concerns, his repeated denials had only served to fuel her fury -- and her fear.

As she stalked off she was thinking of a few choice names she'd really like to call him at the moment. To start with she was more than ready to agree with his mother's long held assertion that Gil Grissom was a moron and a fool.

Grissom could hear Sara stomping about, making nearly as much noise as Bernie and Luis did put together. He knew she was angry and hating having her angry with him, he pulled himself out of bed as quickly as he could, considering the act had suddenly entailed a lot more difficulty and much more wincing than he was used to.

He wasn't sure how despite his slow going he was able to catch up with her, but he did.

"Sara," he called, her name almost as soft as the caress he didn't dare risk giving her.

She turned.

It wasn't until then that he realized he'd been mistaken in believing her response to be anger. Simply having her angry with him would have been bad enough. Having hurt her was worse.

Except it wasn't hurt or anger that stared back at him from out of Sara's dark eyes.

It was fear.

Perhaps it wasn't a forgivable oversight, but it was understandable. He'd so seldom ever seen Sara scared. Often, when things had gotten dangerous at work there had hardly been any time for thought, let alone fear. Even with Adam Trent's makeshift weapon at her throat, she'd been more pissed than frightened.

So Sara scared was still new to him. Particularly a Sara frightened for him.

Finally, Sara spoke, each possibility making her voice both rise and tighten, "You could have broken your arm, your ribs, your neck." But she abruptly halted after the _k _in "You could have gotten yourself killed," as if she worried that she could somehow turn the word true in just the uttering of it.

It may have just been a ladder and a tree and she knew that Grissom had faced far worse, ended up on the wrong end of a gun on numerous occasions, come far too close to being blown to bits more than once, been the target of serial killers and assaulted more times than she knew he'd ever admit to her. In comparison, falling out of a tree was practically benign.

Still.

Grissom offered up no defense or justification, made no response at all, except to move to draw her towards him. And for a moment, he genuinely believed she might shove him and his attempt to comfort her aside. But while she retreated a few steps, Sara let him gather her up and simply embrace her for a while before her own arms eventually slid around him and she held him hard.

Perhaps a bit too hard.

But despite or perhaps in spite of his protesting ribs, Grissom didn't care.

He understood. Had wanted to hold her like this after Trent -- when they had finally found her in the desert -- after he'd read that letter she'd left behind. Hold her tight to him and never let go.

All too well, he remembered what the fear had been like. How he had never wanted to feel that way ever again, even as he understood that you only feared to loose what you so desperately couldn't bear to part with.

He recalled those heart-stopping moments right after they'd located her in the desert and she'd been so still he thought - for the first time feared -- for there really hadn't been time for fear until that moment --

But it was the fear of what could have been that had proven to haunt him most in the hours and days and weeks after the last of the original danger was long past.

If Sara hadn't been able to free herself from under that car....

If she hadn't carefully marked her trail....

If Nick hadn't spotted the flash of her mirror....

If they had found her even an hour later....

_If_....

And here with her now, he could sense all the _might have beens_, the _could have beens_ in her grasp.

Sara was right. He could have hit his head, broken his neck, broken any number of things.

And as if she knew what he was thinking, she whispered, "You were lucky."

Grissom readily acknowledged it, even if he didn't particularly physically feel it at the moment.

Still grasping him close, Sara shook her head and sighed, "Whatever am I to do with you?" But he could hear the tenderness begin to replace the rue.

As he didn't rightly have a reply, he merely held her. When they finally broke apart, he was surprised to see her giving him a slight smile.

"You've... you've got," she said by way of explanation as she extracted several large bits of plant detritus from his hair.

Grissom took this to be a good sign. After all, social grooming in primates frequently figured in cementing reconciliations. When he had said as much to her, Sara neither confirmed nor denied the prospect, she only let out another sigh and told him he'd been spending way too much time around Bridget.

He smiled, began to run his hand along her bare arm and was pleased to see her struggling to conceal a grin. He was likewise glad that he'd never told her that a similarly intimate gesture had been how Natalie Davis had found out about them. How she'd known. But he didn't see the need to tell Sara that now. It was done. Over. And time that he no longer equated that action with Natalie and all that happened after.

"Just promise me," Sara insisted, "that you'll leave the arboreal explorations to Luis and Bernie. At least for a little while."

"Is this your way of telling me I'm too old to be climbing trees?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "I'm trying to tell you that while I have absolutely no interest in having a torrid affair with Luis, if you kill yourself falling out of another tree, I just might seriously consider it."

Grissom chuckled softly. "I wouldn't let Luis hear you say that. He was the one who was holding the ladder."

Sara shook her head, more out of amusement than exasperation. The former was plainly evident as she said, "You haven't even been here an entire week yet and you've already managed to get yourself peed on, fallen out of a tree and ripped open your hand. Either you are suddenly incident prone, Gil, or you've just had a busy last couple of days."

"They've certainly been memorable," he said. "But mostly for other reasons."

This finally did garner him a grin.

"You do realize things aren't usually this eventful around here," she cautioned.

"But then excitement can be overrated," Grissom intoned, then amended, "Well, certain types of excitement."

Sara only rolled her eyes and told him to "stop being a stubborn ass and go lay back down."

*******

Although he had point-blank refused to have his meal brought to him, Grissom retired directly after dinner. Not that he was all that much more comfortable in bed. His entire right side seemed intent on voicing its displeasure as loudly as it possibly could.

Sara, knowing better than to hover or fuss too much over him, pretty much left him to his own devices. Plus, they were running a little low on their preservation solvents and she didn't want to be bothered with having to deal with them over the weekend.

But a little after seven, when she came in bearing a fresh ice pack it was to find him still patiently working his way through his copy of _Costa Rican Natural History. _Since the 800 plus page volume consisted mainly of dry, dense scientific prose, which while illuminating and fascinating in its own way, could only be consumed in relatively small doses even by specialists, she wasn't the least bit surprised.

He peered up at her as she entered and gave her a welcoming grin that he was heartened to see her faintly return.

"You need anything else?" she asked.

"No, I'm good, thanks."

She nodded and went to go, but not before pausing in the entryway to say in a tone Grissom knew to be a little too casual to be taken lightly, "You going to put Luis out of his misery any time soon?"

When he continued to look clueless, Sara supplied, "He's been walking around all day scared shitless because he's afraid you're mad at him."

"I'm not," he replied simply and returned to his book.

She shook her head. Grissom had never really grasped the fact that he could be more than a little intimidating to people who didn't know him well.

"I know that. You know that. Luis doesn't," she maintained.

He seemed to consider this for a minute. "Does he play chess?" he asked.

That caught Sara off guard. "I think Stephen's been teaching him and Bernie how to play," she said after a while.

"You think he'd consider a match?"

Still slightly disbelieving, she said, "With you?"

"Why not? I promise to play nice, dear."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Sara replied, but she went to track down the young man anyway.

********

When he'd entered the tent, board and pieces in hand, Luis had looked more than a little apprehensive at Grissom's sudden summons, but by the time Sara ventured to check up on them some time later, the two men were animatedly chattering away in Spanish about sports of all things.

Grissom was stumbling his way through a rather wistful account about his boyhood love of baseball, even though it was readily apparent that Luis didn't quite grasp the appeal of the game. But the young man had proven very enthusiastic about Costa Rica's chance of making it into the next World Cup Qualifiers. He'd seen them play and win in San José the February before, and was hopeful, despite the fact that the team was currently ranked 37th in the world in between Iran and Hungary.

Luis caught Sara's eye, she put a finger to her lips to indicate that he shouldn't give away her presence. He offered her the barest hint of a nod and promptly returned his gaze to the chest board, but he was grinning broadly when he did so.

And Sara went back to her solvents. When she returned about an hour later with another of Ana's mugs of maracujá tea, the last game was winding down.

Of course there had never been any doubt as to who would win. But that hadn't been the point. Grissom accepted his victories with little fanfare; Luis didn't seem to mind having been repeatedly beaten. Instead, he was looking very much relieved as he packed up the pieces and prepared to head to bed for the night.

Although before he did so, he said softly, in careful English this time, "I am sorry."

Grissom gave him a reassuring smile. "It was an accident, Luis. There's no need to be sorry. Okay?"

Luis nodded. "Do you need anything before I go, Dr. G?"

Sara smirked at this, recalling how less than thrilled Grissom had initially been about the Ticos' adoption of that particular moniker for him. Her assurance that it _could have been worse_, that they could have called him what the CSIs in San Francisco had, hadn't helped. It wasn't like Grissom hadn't been called _The Bugman _before. But it hadn't taken him long before he recognized that Bernie and Luis's use of _Dr. G_ carried with it equal measures of respect and ever-evolving affection. So he soon accepted the nickname with his usual good grace.

Not that Grissom had ever been the type to insist that the title _Doctor _precede his name. It had never featured on his nameplate or business cards or general correspondence. It seemed that the only time it was ever really called into use was when he testified in court or had to present at a conference, and Grissom showed every sign of liking to keep it that way.

But he had already gotten so used to being called Dr. G. by now, that he didn't even register the address, and only said, "Could you pass me the book and the glasses from over on the table please? Thank you. Oh and Luis --"

Luis turned to face him.

"Don't worry about Sara," Grissom said as he slipped on his reading glasses. "She's not mad at you. Just me."

Luis smiled and replied, "Not so mad. She is happy you are here."

Sara had to hurriedly duck out of the way as the young man slipped off to his own tent.

********

When Grissom roused at some indeterminable hour during the night, he was perplexed to realize he was alone in the bed. He blinked, still slightly sleepy and befuddled by the ache all along the right side of his body.

The lantern had been turned down so low it took him a moment before he was barely able to discern Sara's shadow curled up on the floor, her head pillowed on top of her forearms.

It wasn't the first time he'd encountered her asleep in such an awkward position. Over the years, on the far too numerous occasions he hadn't been able to convince her to go home to get some proper rest, he'd found her dozing like this in the lab break room. Thankfully, it had been a far rarer occurrence once the two of them had started seeing each other and Grissom could add the insistence of a lover to that of a boss.

Knowing there was no way she could be comfortable, he gently nudged her awake.

"Sara," he called softly.

And she stirred, then glanced up bleary eyed at him, the way she always did when unexpectedly woken.

"Honey, what are you doing on the floor?" he asked.

"You were already asleep when I came to bed," Sara replied, brushing her hair from her face. "And since even with the tea you'd been having a hard time getting comfortable, I didn't want to disturb you."

Of course what she didn't tell him was that he'd been occupying the vast majority of the bed at the time, so there really hadn't been any way for her to have even wedged herself in beside him without waking him in the process.

While Grissom could see why she hadn't chosen to doze off in one of the tent's camp stools as they were barely comfortable for sitting on for short periods of time, but the floor?

"Why didn't you go bunk with Bridget?" he asked, recalling the spare cot in Sara's old tent.

Her reply of "I wasn't all that interested in sleeping apart," rendered him effectively speechless for a moment.

But then he reached out for her with his left hand, said, "Come to bed," and after easing himself over to his side, tugged her onto the cot beside him.

Sara snuggled into his good shoulder.

"You aren't really still as upset with me as you pretend," Grissom whispered after a while.

He could sense her soften even more at this.

"You're going to be hurting for while," she said. "I suppose that is punishment enough."

Although in truth Sara wasn't upset with him any longer. Besides, it had been just as Grissom had told Luis earlier, an accident.

In any case, she couldn't really fault Grissom's almost insatiable curiosity or his inherent drive to see and know and discover for himself. Those were among the things that had so attracted her to him in the first place and were still among what she loved most about him. She just preferred that he'd be a bit more careful in the exercise of his trademark inquisitiveness.

Before drifting off to sleep again, Sara whispered, "Goodnight, Gil."

And Grissom knew from the warmth in those two words, that while the events of the day might not yet be entirely forgiven or forgotten, at least she continued to love him anyway.


	15. Fifteen: Another JustSo Story

**Fifteen: Another Just-So Story, More or Less**

_Ten Forty-Five._

Sara did a double take at the watch on her wrist in order to make sure she'd read the time correctly.

It really was ten forty-five.

Which meant that Grissom had been in with the doctor for forty-five minutes. _Forty-five _minutes.

When Ana had spoken about the visit it was simply a couple of x-rays -- _just in case_. But x-rays certainly didn't take forty-five minutes. She'd seen Dave do complete body scans in a fraction of that time back in Vegas.

So what on earth could be taking forty-five minutes?

Sara pulled out the shopping list Ana had given her just after the old man who usually gave them a lift had stopped to drop Sara and Grissom off right in front of the doctor's office. She smoothed it out and mechanically reread it before replacing it in her pocket. Sara needn't have bothered. She'd already memorized the list more than half an hour ago, but examining it had given her - or at least had given her the illusion - of having something to do. It hadn't really helped this time or the previous half dozen times. Nor had the pacing she'd begun fifteen minutes before.

It wasn't that Sara wasn't used to waiting rooms. She'd spent plenty of time in them. Perhaps too much time. While her intimate familiarity with them in various ERs, hospitals and doctor's offices hadn't exactly bred the proverbial contempt; she wasn't exactly fond of them either.

The professional visits were one thing. It had gotten easier over the years to regard the trips to gather or pick up evidence with the same sort of detachment (and equal measure of distaste) as she did dealing with things like expectorant and two-month-old de-comps in duffle bags.

It had been the personal visits that had really rankled. Even the vaguest hints of memories from her all too numerous childhood visits she always hastily shoved aside. Besides, it wasn't as if her trips had become any more infrequent as an adult. In Vegas over the years she'd waited to see Nick and Brass and Greg. Waited to see countless doctors herself. But this was really the first time she'd had to wait for Grissom.

It wasn't a reassuring feeling. The waiting. And waiting in general was not something she'd ever been all that keen on.

_Forty-five minutes_. Actually, it was more like forty-nine minutes, but Sara didn't dare glance down at her watch to make sure.

By the time she had crawled into bed with Grissom the night before, her perhaps more than a little irrational concerns had given way to reason. Grissom was fine. Just a little bruised. And he had seemed okay earlier. Or at least as okay as could be expected after falling more than ten feet off a ladder.

Okay, maybe _okay_ wasn't really the right word, the more she thought about it.

While she'd been up well before dawn as usual, Grissom had been sleeping so still and sound that she hadn't wanted to wake him, so she'd let him sleep as late as absolutely possible. But he had risen with such apparent difficulty that she had been compelled to say to him, "I won't ask you how you're feeling," if only to dispel a little of her own concern.

Thankfully, he hadn't insisted that he was fine and even as stiff and sore as he obviously was, had only mutely readied himself for the day. For her part Sara had tried to exercise with him all the patience he had with her when she had first come back from the hospital. How Grissom had managed to do it without appearing to fuss, she'd wished she knew.

For it was hard not to notice as she lagged behind with him when they walked out that morning, that his pace was a lot slower and his limping a lot worse than usual. The hour drive in the back of the truck hadn't helped. In fact, by the time they finally made it into town, Grissom was honestly looking more than a little green. It was a state Sara had so seldom ever seem him in, as nothing, no matter how gross, ever seemed to nauseate him. And the only times she'd known him to be sick was when he was suffering his way through a particularly nasty migraine. That he hadn't said much more during the drive than he had during the walk to the road hadn't surprised her. It was probably, she reasoned, because he had been too intent on not throwing up.

And now the doctor's visit, which should have put the last of her fears to rest, had because of its unexpected interminability, only heightened her sense of disquiet.

Perhaps she and Ana had missed something.

Her mind was just about to start a macabre survey of the possibilities when the doctor finally emerged from the treatment room. Sara was instantly relieved to see him smiling at her in a way that wasn't meant to conceal bad news, and was further comforted when he began in his barely accented English (Ana had informed her that he'd gone to medical school at the University of Michigan) to address her in a relaxed, amiable manner.

"The x-rays were normal. Nothing broken," he said. "But he did bruise his ribs pretty badly, so some soreness, stiffness and some difficulty breathing are to be expected."

Sara nodded at this. It was pretty much the same thing Ana had told her the day before.

"I left the stitches in," the doctor continued. "They'll need to be removed in a couple of weeks, but you or Dr. Velasquez should be able to handle that just fine. So nothing strenuous for a few days," he smiled as he opened the door and motioned for her to go through to the exam room. Sara saw that Grissom was in the process of dressing when she entered. "Just make sure he gets plenty of rest," the doctor continued. "Otherwise, your husband should be completely back to normal in a couple of weeks."

She and Grissom had both frozen at this. _Husband?_ they both seemed to be thinking. Sara was about to protest that Grissom wasn't her husband, well at least not yet, but didn't and was surprised when Grissom hadn't moved to correct the doctor either.

Utterly oblivious of his error, the doctor simply shook hands with each of them and gave Grissom one final admonition to _stay out of trees, at least for a while_ before leaving them on their own.

"Did you --" Sara asked, giving Grissom an openly inquiring look.

Grissom shook his head with an equally bemused expression on his face. Then after a moment, one of his enigmatic grins began to spread over his features. But Sara was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the doctor having proven correct Grissom's assertions that he was fine.

He was instead thinking that being referred to as Sara's husband did have a nice sound to it.

As he was pondering this, Sara moved to help him work the sleeve of his shirt over his sore shoulder just as she had earlier that morning and just as she had then, she left him to do up the buttons on his own.

As she watched him, the ghost of a tease that at least she hadn't been mistaken for his daughter, never made it to her lips. And if she was being honest with herself, she rather liked being mistaken for his wife.

For the first time, the fact that it might not be all that long before she actually _was_ Grissom's wife really struck her. The prospect, rather than filling her with apprehension, gratified her.

When after having finished with the buttons, Grissom peered up to find Sara still scrutinizing him, a soft smile on her lips and her right hand hovering over the ring that dangled on the chain about her neck.

Sara met his gaze and realizing that she'd been caught staring, hurriedly muttered something about them needing to _get going_ as they _still had a lot to do_.

*******

Ana had given them the week's produce order to fill. It was light work and mostly restricted to the area near the doctor's office and Sara knew it. Grissom didn't, and probably would have thought -- although not said -- something about not needing to be coddled, having fallen out of a tree or no, so Sara simply handed him the list and led him towards where the town hosted its Saturday farmer's market or _la feria_.

As they walked side by side, their fingers brushed and for a moment, Sara curled hers around his. He tightened his own grasp, squeezed her hand and gave her both an affectionate grin and a wink.

While they threaded their way along the busy streets, Sara recounted to Grissom that on her first trip to the market, Ana had told her _la_ _feria_ was such a long-held and revered Tico tradition that they even had an adage about it: _Aunque llueve y tuene hay que ir a la feria, _which meant _Even if it thunders and rains, one must go to the market!_

And it seemed like everyone was there that morning. The market was alive with a myriad of sights and sounds and smells. The converted roadway was a cacophony of bustle and busyness, filled with the different tones and timbres of unfamiliar voices quickly carrying on in tongues neither quite foreign or familiar as the shoppers called bright greetings to the friends and relatives they met along the way and the vendors noisily touted their wares.

And what wares there were. Everything imaginable. Beneath the hastily erected plastic canopies and from out of the backs of beat up trucks, produce and product collected and spread. Tables and tarps were over-laden with mass-market merchandise, bargain beauty products, cheap children's toys, trinkets and t-shirts. Riots of flowers bloomed. New-caught fish reposed in buckets of ice. Lotto venders hawked hopes of instant riches and permanent reprieve from want.

But the real treasures to be found lay in the sheer abundance of fruits and vegetables for sale, all _fresquito_ -- fresh. It was these that lent to the _feria _its organic aroma so unlike the over-processed, almost stale, sterile supermarket air of the States. As well as its brightest hues --

The pale green and golden arrays of bananas, pineapples and plantains. The ruddy oranges of mangos, oranges and papayas. Tomatoes blushed. Large peppers huddled together in their reds and greens. Yuca and potatoes proudly bore their earthy browns. Leafy heads of lettuce, cilantro and celery sprawled unfurled, while garlic hung in bunches alongside dried hot peppers. Melons, split and whole, promised sweetness.

As Ana purchased the rice, beans and corn masa which served as the camp's main staples in five and ten kilo bags every other week (and which Bernie and Luis had the pleasure of toting back to camp), it was mainly the fresh produce Grissom and Sara had been sent to find. She let him do most of the choosing, as she knew from long past experience that Grissom possessed an uncanny knack, an almost sixth sense, for choosing only the best. Although that feat wasn't quite as impressive here where all the produce had a certain measure of inherent vitality to it.

And while Grissom's Spanish was still a little rusty, it was a whole lot better than Sara's, despite Ana, Luis and Bernie's best attempts to school her over the weeks she'd been there. So the only way Sara knew if Grissom hadn't quite asked for something properly was from the traders' amused and sometimes bemused faces. She certainly knew that look well. They gave it to her all the time. And yet she knew the Ticos appreciated the effort. Far too many tourists either didn't, or couldn't be bothered.

Before long, they had filled the mesh bags Sara had previously kept stowed in her backpack to the point of bursting, and the backpack, too. Grissom refused, sore shoulder or no, to have her carry all of their purchases and Sara relented enough to let him take a few as long as he kept them in his left hand.

Suddenly, Grissom stopped short in front of a table littered with electronic goods. Sara wondered why until he pulled out his wallet to pay for several blister packs of batteries.

"For Bernie's..." he began.

"Radio," she finished with a smile and readily recalling just how handy that radio had proven to be, she handed the vendor several packages of her own.

But after the first hour or so, Sara could tell that Grissom was beginning to wilt, despite his best attempts to disguise his increasingly frequent pauses as him just wanting to have a better look at everything. Besides, it wasn't as if they were in a hurry. The list had been short to start with and as she scanned it one last time there was just one stop left. Unfortunately, it was several long blocks away. And as there was still the hour plus walk home to consider and Sara didn't want Grissom to wear himself out, she gestured to a small open air cafe, or _soda,_ across the street from the market and suggested that he go have a drink.

"The _frescos_ are really good," she said. And when he asked where she was headed off to, she simply replied with a teasing sort of grin, "The drugstore. As we've suddenly had a huge increase in the need for first aid supplies for some reason or other."

Grissom didn't rise to the bait or protest her suggestion. When she asked if the doctor had given him any scripts for medication, he handed a short list over. As it turned out, in Costa Rica few drugs required actual written prescriptions from a doctor.

Sara exchanged the paper for several shopping bags as she said, "When I get back, we'll have just enough time to have lunch before we have to meet Ana and the guys at the post office to pick up the rest of your things."

He nodded in agreement and watched her disappear into the crowd before lingering for a moment at one last stall selling produce to make a quick purchase of his own. He then crossed to take a seat at one of the soda's plastic-clothed Formica tables that looked out into the bustling street.

He asked the young server what she recommended to drink. Not too long after, she brought back a glass full of a clear viscous solution in which tiny arrow-like seeds were suspended that she called _chan_. It was sweet and cool and refreshing despite its strange appearance.

Grissom sat there surrounded by the sizzle of meat and the hot smells of cooking, listening to the raucous laughter of a pack of children playing an impromptu game of _fútbol_ in the empty field across the way, thinking as he did so that Sara really did mean well and really was trying hard not to fuss.

He would never admit it to her, but in a strangely perverse sort of way, part of him secretly enjoyed her fussing, if only a little bit. So he let her continue to do it, and hoped she wouldn't find out, otherwise she just might stop and he didn't really want her to do that.

With a half-amused, half-rueful grin, Grissom thought back on the strictures she had given him before he'd gone out into the field for the first time nearly a week before.

"Make sure to take it easy at first," she had said and then had laughed "Neither" when he had asked her if that had been her way of telling him he was _getting old _or _was just out of shape_.

"The humidity will knock you flat on your ass," she'd warned. "And heat exhaustion sucks. So promise to take it easy."

"I will."

"You're looking a little pink. The sun is a lot stronger here even with the canopy overhead, so don't forget sunscreen and make sure to reapply it frequently. And the bug repellent, too."

"Okay."

"And drink plenty of water. Sip, don't gulp. But drink a lot and often. Otherwise you'll get dehydrated quickly."

"Yes, dear," he'd dutifully intoned after her latest recommendation.

For a brief moment, he had half-heartedly thought about reminding her that he had done fieldwork in the rainforest before, but had ultimately decided against it. The truth was that as Sara was the only person he had ever really permitted to fret over or caution him, he had missed it while she had been gone.

And while he had often returned from the field hot, sunburned and bug bit, he had stayed out of mischief for the most part, at least until the day before.

Perhaps he should have paid more attention to her repeated admonishments to _be careful_. But as they were often said just before or just after she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek to wish him a good day at work, he must have been too distracted for them to sink in properly. Maybe if they had, he wouldn't have taken that tumble.

And then he wouldn't be so tired and aching that he hadn't wanted to challenge Sara's thinly veiled suggestion for him to sit down and rest for a bit.

Besides, he was enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face and watching the people come and go, remembering as he did so that little more than a week ago he'd been mired in the cold and ice and what remained of Vegas' rare heavy snowfall. And even though he hurt like hell, he'd never felt so happy in his life.

He wasn't sure exactly how, but somehow, he had managed to forget that the worst of any injury wasn't felt the day of, but rather the day after. And this was definitely one of those days when he felt every one of his nearly fifty-three years.

He had slept through Sara's pre-dawn waking, chores and most of breakfast before she had gently nudged him and he'd awakened to being more stiff and sore than he could remember in a very long time. He had somewhat vainly hoped that the hour walk to the road would help ease some of the tightness, but it really hadn't and had only tired him instead. He'd mused that at least they didn't have to walk the remaining twenty-plus miles into town.

But the truck that Ana arranged to pick them up and drop them off again each week turned out to be old, half rusty with age and with a suspension system that obviously needed serious work. Although the roads were so pitted and pot-holed from all the heavy rains from the just waning rainy season that even an entirely new suspension wouldn't have likely made any difference. So Grissom had felt every bump and jostle shoot up his spine and rattle his ribs. It was only the rush of air after the almost stifling stillness of the inner rainforest that had kept him from being sick from the pain. Perhaps him refusing Ana's suggestion to ride in the front had not been the brightest of ideas.

So Sara's gently insisted upon rest actually did feel good and was much appreciated.

He was just about to finish the last of his _fresco_ when he spotted Sara wending her way towards him, parcels in hand. His whole face brightened with a smile and she returned his grin as she dropped onto the stool beside him.

"You find everything you needed?" he asked.

Sara nodded and discretely popped the lids to a couple of pill bottles and shook out the requisite number of pale tablets before presenting them to Grissom without a word of explanation, urging or insistence. As he had frequently done the same in the weeks following her return from the hospital, he knew he couldn't rightly refuse now with their roles reversed.

So he took them equally wordlessly before saying, "You want to explain how the whole ordering thing works here as apparently they don't do menus?"

Which she did. Sodas where were Ticos ate. They served _comida typico_, cheap, fast, fresh food. These small family-owned cafes, which could be found throughout Costa Rica, all pretty much served the same thing. Hence why there was no real need for menus. And while you could order a la cart, for the most part _casados_, the Tico equivalent to the American blue plate special, made up the bulk of lunch orders.

The name _casado_ having originated from the Spanish root for _marry,_ _casarse,_ reinforced the dish's tendency to be a marriage or combination of various flavors on a single plate. As the ubiquitous _gallo pinto_, fried plantains, fresh cabbage salad and extra thick _chorreados _(tortillas) served with an ample side of _natilla_ or sour cream were the same no matter which _casado_ a person ordered, it was just the meat portion that varied. As Sara never touched anything but the occasional fish, the fried tilapia was all that she could recommend from personal experience.

Grissom agreed with her choice and when they young woman who had served him earlier came to take their orders Sara told her, "Regaleme dos casados con pescado" with an ease and fluency that seemed to impress Grissom.

She smiled at this and quipped, "You know I've always known how to order out."

*******

They were in the middle of making their way through their respective plates when Sara turned to Grissom and said, "What were you two doing in the doctor's office, brokering the next mid-east peace deal?"

He peered up at her confused.

"You were in there for nearly an hour," she supplied.

"Apart from the obvious?" he said. "Talking about Vegas. He'd been to Chicago and New York while he was going to school, but had never made it to Vegas. Wanted to know if it was anything like the movies."

"You didn't burst his bubble with a bunch of gory stories, did you?" Sara laughed.

"Nothing gory came up."

"He wasn't the least bit curious when you told him what you did for a living there?" she asked.

"He didn't ask. I didn't offer."

Slightly bemused, she said, "Not in the mood to talk about dead bodies then?"

"Not really," he replied. Then he turned his attention to her. "Ana told me you never really talk about it either. What you used to do back in Vegas. And it wasn't because the topic wasn't suitable for dinner conversations."

Sara thought about it for a moment. "People expect it to be exciting, being a CSI. Like it is in the movies," she shrugged. "But you and I both know that it is a lot of long hours, tedium and long shots. The thing is, that is the easy part of the job.

"I just got tired of seeing the worst in people day-in and day-out. It wasn't the _what_ that they were doing that was so horrible. Maybe you really do just become immune to all of that after a while."

Grissom nodded. They were bad enough -- the horrors that men do -- but they hadn't been the worst part.

"It was the _Why?,_" she continued and as if wanting to cut Grissom off before he could comment said, "And yes, I know that the _Why?_ wasn't really our problem. But it was still there."

*******

"The fuel gauge is broken," Sara told the crowd that had gathered around her and the suddenly immobile truck.

"You can tell that in less than five minutes?" Ana asked utterly incredulous.

Sara nodded as she rose from where she had been leaning over to listen for the telltale slosh of fuel. But when she had unscrewed the cap on the tank and given the tail end of the truck a vigorous shake there had been no sound.

"If your fuel gauge says you have fuel and your tank is empty, then your fuel gauge is busted," she said simply. "At least it's easy enough to fix. You just need gas."

After Ana had translated Sara's diagnosis to the others and handed a small wad of bills to Bernie, he and Luis started off up the road back towards town. Considering that the traffic had been relatively busy all that afternoon, it wouldn't likely be more than an hour for them to hitch a ride in and back out again.

There was nothing to do but wait.

Sara began to absently wipe off her hands on her pants after having slammed the hood of the truck closed. Grissom handed her a bandana from his back pocket.

"Thanks," she said gratefully.

"I never did ask how you got to be so good at cars," he said.

"That's easy," she replied. "My older brother was really, I mean _really_, into cars. So I learned to make myself useful. Besides, somehow I always seemed to get stuck with auto duty back in Vegas so I tried to make the most of it. You never seemed to mind."

But before he could reply, Ana tapped her on the shoulder and it was several minutes later before Sara turned back to find that Grissom had left her side.

That hadn't surprised her. It was far too hot to sit in the truck or loiter too long by the side of the road. The two boys who had been riding in the back with them had hurriedly and eagerly made use of the breakdown as an opportunity to play. After a moment, Sara located Grissom sitting beneath the shade of a chicle tree with another smaller boy of whom she hadn't taken much notice of before.

That sight was unusual. So she stepped away from where Ana and the old man who drove the truck were gossiping to eavesdrop. She heard the crunch of gravel behind her and found that Ana had joined her, which proved helpful as Grissom was saying something to the boy in Spanish that Sara couldn't translate.

"Probably talking about bugs," Sara sighed quietly.

Ana nodded. "Yes. Beetles."

"Figures."

But it was soon evident that Grissom hadn't started in on one of his scientific lectures. Instead, he was telling the boy a story. His usually slightly broken Spanish had smoothed, as if he were retelling the tale from memory.

Of course Grissom's memory was legendary, beyond so. It was down right scary sometimes what he remembered. He would just pretend not to remember when it proved to be convenient. Although he really did seem to have a genuine block when it came to recalling administrative tasks and managing paperwork.

The story seemed fairly simple. Ana translated it easily.

_One day a very long time ago, Parrot came upon Agouti and Beetle having a disagreement. Agouti insisted that as he was so much bigger and faster a runner than Beetle there was no way that Beetle could ever outrace him. _

_Having always been a fan of challenges, Parrot proposed a race. She would even bestow upon the winner a coat of fantastic colors as a prize. Agouti scoffed at Beetle's chances and was already dreaming of the coat he wanted: one with spots like Leopard whose fur everyone envied. With Beetles short legs and small body, there was no way he could loose. So Agouti became even more arrogant. Beetle however simply quietly waited for the race to begin. _

One. Two. Three. Go!_ Parrot cried. _

_But Agouti had forgotten one very important detail: Beetle could fly. So he was shocked to find that when the race had been run, or flown in the case of Beetle, Beetle had indeed won, not by using his brawn, but by using his brain._

_Ever since then, Beetle has had a beautiful rainbow coat to wear upon his back while Agouti is still a plain and muddy sort of brown. _

"Would you like to see what I mean?" Grissom asked, pulling from his pocket a small tin. The little boy nodded eagerly. Grissom unscrewed the lid and showed him. The boy's eyes went wide with delight.

Sara knew that it must have been the specimen of _Cotinis mutabilis,_ fruit beetle, Grissom had been so excited to discover hanging around camp several days earlier. So she hadn't needed to catch Grissom explaining to the boy that it was an _escarabajo de las frutas_. She knew, too, that it was a very impressive specimen. Even she hadn't been able to keep from oohing and awing over its brilliantly iridescent metallic green carapace.

The boy examined the beetle for a long time before extending the tin back to Grissom. When Grissom shook his head and told the boy to keep it, the little boy wasn't the only one surprised.

He protested that he didn't have anything to give in exchange. Grissom replied that the boy had given him something already. When the boy asked _¿Qué?_ Sara didn't need Ana to tell her that _una sonrisa_ meant _a smile._

*******

Sara's prognosis about the truck having indeed been proven correct -- once it had been refueled it started back up with only a cough or two of protest -- everyone piled into the back and they were off again.

Despite the sounds of Bernie's radio blaring the latest fútbol match, Grissom had begun to nod off, the pills and exhaustion having finally gotten the better of him. When his head began to sink onto Sara's shoulder, she pulled her bulging pack onto her lap and eased his head down to rest upon it. Soon he was fast asleep and snoring and she'd been unable to resist running her fingers through his hair as he slept. Perhaps it was all for the best, considering how green he had been on the trip into town that morning.

When she peered into the front cab of the truck, she found that the little boy whom Grissom had been talking with so excitedly earlier was also dozing in his grandfather's lap. She smiled slightly at the coincidence and remembered back to what Ana had said

Grissom's tale completed, Ana had pulled Sara off to the side and told her that she'd never heard that story before.

"So you or the guys didn't tell it to him?" Sara'd asked.

"No," Ana'd replied and then said, "How did he know?"

"About the story?"

"No, about the little boy."

For as it turned out the boy whom Sara would have pegged at being no more than eight, was nearly twelve and the other two boys who were his cousins would frequently make fun of him because he was so small and slow.

Sara hadn't had a response to Ana's revelation then, she really didn't know any more of one now.

But the memory of watching him with the little boy had started her thinking.

They never had spoken about them having children of their own.

Even though Sara had barely seen Grissom with kids outside of work apart from Catherine's daughter Lindsey, she knew that he would be a good father.

He would probably be a little overprotective and she felt sorry for any future boyfriends that might come to call. But mostly she thought of him child tenderly cradled in his arms and of tiny fingers wrapped around his thumb. Of course there would be games of catch and bug-hunting excursions in warm weather and books propped open on his lap ready to read.

No, she had no doubts whatsoever that he would make a good father, especially when she recalled what Warrick had said during his interview for custody of Eli:

"The most important thing you need to know about how to raise a child is how to give a child love. And I've been loved. Look, I've always tried to be a good man. I've screwed up. And when I have, there has always been one man in my life that's set me straight. I've learned a lot from him. How to be fair. How to forgive. How to be inspired. How to inspire others."

But it had been Warrick's reply to the interviewer's response of "sounds like a special person" that had touched Sara the first time she'd seen it, and struck her now.

"He is," Warrick had said. "If I could have picked my own father, I'd have picked him."

Sara was glad that the others were so wrapped up in listening to the game on the radio that they took no notice of her. Still, she turned her face away as she blinked back tears.

*******

For Grissom, the walk back to camp seemed to take just as long, if not longer than the walk out had that morning. It was an observation that seemed to run counter to his usual experience that return trips while not in actuality took less time than the original ones, at least seemed to. It was just one of those strange peculiarities of time or of the perception of time at least.

He'd still been mostly asleep when after the truck had come to a stop, Sara had gently shaken him awake. She'd insisted that the others go on and they would follow. Even with the delay brought on by the unexpected breakdown, there had been a good hour and a half left of daylight for them to get back to camp.

They hiked in in single file, as that was all the narrow paths would accommodate and even then the branches overhead and roots underfoot still made the going difficult at times. Sara had taken up the rear again; Grissom imagined the better to keep an eye on him.

She'd been strangely quiet since Bernie and Luis had returned, not having said much more than _You're going straight to bed when we get back_ as she helped him out of the truck.

He'd been too drowsy and far too exhausted to protest, or even want to.

So that when they finally made it back to camp and to their tent, he turned to her and said, "Sara?" in a slightly concerned voice.

"Hmm?" she replied absently, seemingly intent on unpacking her few personal purchases of the day into her trunk.

"You okay?"

Her answering "yeah" wasn't all that particularly convincing, so Grissom tried a more direct approach and stated the obvious:

"You've been quiet ever since Luis and Bernie came back with the gas."

Sara sighed heavily before settling on telling him the truth, no matter how much it worried and cost her to do so.

"Ana and I saw you with the little boy," she began.

He waited for her to continue, unsure of why or how that had managed to so upset her into silence.

But instead of an explanation, she offered him the question, "Where did you hear that story?"

At least it was a simple one to answer. "In a village outside of Manaus more than twenty years ago," he said. Then with a sort of self-deprecating slight smile he added, "My Spanish was a lot better back then."

"I thought they spoke Portuguese in Brazil," Sara asked suddenly very confused.

Grissom nodded. "They do. But I certainly didn't and the guide I was traveling with who did spoke Spanish and not English so I only ever heard the story in Spanish."

"It was sweet."

"The story?"

"No."

His smile and tone turned reflective, then sad, almost distant. "He reminded me of a boy I met last month."

"On a case?"

He nodded again. "His mother and uncle had been discovered shot in Korea town and he'd gone missing."

"But you found him."

"I almost wish we hadn't. The poor kid was HIV positive and his mother had him enrolled in all of these clinical trials to help pay for her drug habit. Except the doctors were treating him like a guinea pig. Worse actually. They were practically torturing the kid in the name of science. So when his uncle got out of jail, he tried to put a stop to it, but his mother shot him. And then he shot her."

"The uncle?"

"No. The boy."

Sara gaped wide-eyed at Grissom for a moment, both shocked and yet not. It was the not that was hardest part to stomach.

"He was just a kid," Grissom was saying. "A kid who should have had a mother who looked out and took care of him. Not one who would farm him out for drugs."

His voice had turned brittle to the point of anger and bitterness. The _whats_ and _whys_ they'd seen over the years had been horrifying enough, but the crimes against children always seem the most difficult to fathom and had been hard for all of them, even Grissom who had always ordinarily been fairly placid and almost stoic about the job.

Sara remembered how he'd lost his temper after having found Zachary Anderson's infant body on a golf course that first year she'd come to Vegas. How relentless he'd been to help find Jason Crowley and Lucas Hanson when the two boys had gone missing. She'd always thought it had been because of all the victims they encountered children were the most innocent and undeserving of the evil that happened to them, but seeing him with that little boy this afternoon she wondered.

Grissom, sensing that Sara had something else on her mind, left the sad story of Park Bang there.

Although her suddenly saying rather rapidly, "We never talked about children, about having them I mean," genuinely caught him off guard, despite it being true.

The sum-total of their discussion about anything to do with human reproduction (at least in reference to themselves) had been limited to a rather brief practical conversation about birth control that took all of less than five minutes once Sara had explained somewhat awkwardly that because of a _female complaint_ she hadn't really wanted to go into detail about at the time, she'd had IUD implanted several years before. While naturally curious, Grissom had known better than to inquire further.

The topic hadn't really come up since.

"No, we never have," he admitted.

"Don't tell me you've never thought about it," she replied.

Grissom had. Thought about Sara growing great with child. Thought of feeling the baby writhe and kick beneath his fingertips. Thought of holding the newborn in his arms for the first time. Of course he knew about the dirty diapers, two a.m. feedings, the colic and terrible twos (and later teens) and all of that, too.

So yes, he'd thought about it. But he'd really never got past the image of the child nursing as Sara sang softly in the way she always did when preoccupied, before the more rational part of his mind did the math and he realized he would be more than seventy when that baby graduated from high school. And there was no guarantee that he would live even that long. His own father had been even younger than he was now when he had died so sudden and unexpectedly, and Grissom had known all too well the pain of having to grow up without a father.

He knew the math wasn't in his favor when it came to genetics either. And while he could readily discount Sara's fears that there might be a murder gene, he couldn't so easily dismiss the fact that he had inherited the condition that had left his mother deaf when she was only a child. His mother had lived a long and healthy and apart from her grief at losing her husband, a contented life. He knew she had seldom felt ostracized or diminished because of her inability to hear. But he remembered his own fear at finding out that at forty-six, he was loosing his hearing. Remembered how he had thought that loss would likely cost him the career he had spent his whole life building. He'd been so afraid that he hadn't really wanted to admit to the loss to anyone and most certainly not to Sara. It had made him feel vulnerable, that he was no longer in control of his own body, let alone his own future.

He knew he had been lucky. The surgery had succeeded in removing the growths and his hearing had returned back to normal. Whether it would stay that way or not, he didn't know. But that fear of coming so close to losing everything stayed with him. In some ways, it had made him even more cautious. He didn't want to put anyone else through that. Not knowing what he knew.

Perhaps if he hadn't been such a coward and a moron and a fool for so long, if it hadn't taken him nearly eleven years to admit to himself that he wanted nothing more than a life with Sara, it might have been possible. But not now.

And Grissom had long learned not to dwell on things he knew he couldn't have.

When he didn't reply for a while, Sara's shoulders slumped as if a large weight had suddenly settled over her and she turned away. There were just some things that seemed easier to say when you didn't have to look the other person in the face.

"Gil --" she began and there was a long beat as if she were gathering her breath --and her courage. He came up behind her, slid one arm around her until he held her close from behind.

"Gil... I'm -- I'm sorry... I..."

Grissom's other hand settled on her shoulder at this and her eyes closed at the feel of his thumb running along the inside of her neck.

"I am. But I... I can't."

He gently turned her towards him, brushed a stray strand of hair back behind her ear before saying, "I know."

And he really did. He understood. Understood that it was more than just her feeling uneasy around children. Understood her fear of someday turning into her parents. Of history repeating itself. Understood that she didn't really have any idea what real parents were supposed to be like in the first place. Even what home really was.

_Our life together was the only home I've ever really had._

That line from that letter of hers had given him so much sorrow. For even without his father around, Grissom had grown up in a home with a mother who loved and cared for him. He may have lost track of what that was like during all those years when he had been as obsessed as he'd been with his work, but at least he had known home and love in ways she never had.

So yeah, he knew, knew how that never knowing had made it hard for her to even begin to conceive of herself as a mother. Even though he knew that she needn't worry. With her almost fierce protectiveness and yet gentle tenderness, Sara would make a fine one. Of that he didn't doubt.

So when her eyes finally flicked up to his, he wasn't startled to see both hers and his own regret reflected there.

"Neither can I," he murmured.

Sara nodded, understanding as he seemed to do and hugged him hard.

"Besides," Grissom began after a while, hoping to see her smile again, "Hank would get horribly jealous."

She let out a hiccup that he was happy to hear contained the hint of a laugh when she said, "Probably."

They were both quiet for a moment. Then Grissom sat and reached for her hand.

"Come here," he said. She did, curling her legs up beneath her and resting her head on his shoulder.

"I have something for you," he whispered.

Curious, she sat up and expected him to pull something from out of one of the duffle bags Luis and Bernie had carried in for Grissom. But he reached for the small rucksack he had toted with him into town. From out of it, he pulled an orange of all things. She stared at it, unable to recall Grissom ever having an especial partiality for the fruit.

He pulled a knife from his front pants pocket, deftly sliced the fruit in two and saying something in Spanish she didn't quite comprehend presented her with one of the halves. At her puzzled look, he repeated it.

"Half... orange?" she asked with a bemused half smile. "Could we perhaps try that in English please?"

"You're the other half of my orange," Grissom replied. "It's a Tico saying. From what I gather it means that you are my other half. My better half," he confessed.

Sara simply sat there dumfounded before eventually taking the orange section he held out to her. Still stunned, she watched him peel his half and quietly consume it without another word. Then her mind and heart caught up with her hearing and she leaned in and kissed him eagerly. He tasted of oranges and ever since the two of them both harbored a particular fondness for the fruit.

*******

_A/N: The story that Grissom tells the little boy is an adaptation of an actual traditional Brazilian folktale and like Kipling's many animal orgins tales – a just-so story. _


	16. Sixteen: When the Cat's Away

**Sixteen: When the Cat's Away, or a (Not So) Perfectly Innocent Sunday Afternoon**

Grissom had been taking advantage of the late Sunday morning peace and quiet to catch up on the looming backlog of specimens when he felt more than heard the presence of someone standing behind him, someone who was apparently taking silent stock of what he was currently working on.

It wasn't Sara. Apart from the fact that he knew from the scribbled note he'd found on the bedside table earlier in the day that Sara was out in the field with Ana, Sara never lingered just beyond his peripheral vision. Luis and Bernie never loitered quietly and Bridget fidgeted, so if Ana was still with Sara, that just left Stephen.

Grissom was about to inquire as to how Stephen was doing, but Stephen beat him to it.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"Much," Grissom replied. "Thank you."

There was a long pause, as if Stephen were making up his mind about something. He appeared, albeit unsuccessfully, to attempt to cover his unease by leisurely taking a seat across from Grissom.

Grissom, uncertain about the precise nature of the forthcoming conversation, put down the specimen he was working on and gave the man his full attention.

However, Stephen's next inquiry of "Do you know what day it is?" was the last thing he expected.

While all the changes and holidays had done a number on his internal clock, Grissom knew perfectly well that it was Sunday. Despite that being the obvious answer he gave it anyway.

But this seemed to be the reply Stephen was expecting, because he nodded before continuing, "I take it Sara didn't tell you that we really don't work on Sundays then?"

"No."

"Ah," Stephen sighed with a shrug of comprehension. "Of course as this is Sara we're talking about and as she usually works on Sundays anyway --"

That revelation didn't amaze Grissom in the least. So when Stephen next asked, "Was she this bad in Vegas?" Grissom only chuckled and replied, "Worse."

Which was true. After all, how many times had she come in to work on her days off? Mind you, he had called her in most of those times so it wasn't entirely all her fault, but still.

Of course, he hadn't been much better. Okay, he had to admit that he had probably been even worse. But being shift supervisor meant certain sacrifices to one's personal time. That and working had often long been far better than the alternative. Although it certainly hadn't been of late.

But here, the specimen classification work was practically relaxing. And was definitely preferable to any more time spent alone reading in bed while he was ostensibly "recovering" from his accident.

"Well, Ana would have my hide if she saw you working," Stephen replied and with that, Grissom realized what lay behind the man's earlier reticence. He'd been sent to be the bearer of bad news or at least the boss's orders and had been trying to execute the task with as much tact and discretion as he could. Stephen really needn't have bothered. He might have the title_ Doctor_ in front of his name, but Grissom knew and understood that here Ana was in charge here and what she said went no questions asked.

He was about to say as much to Stephen, but Stephen was telling him, "She and Sara went to go have a look at some orchids that Sara discovered in the newest plot. As it's still a little early in the season for most orchids to be flowering, Ana got really excited."

That came as no surprise. Grissom had, in the course of the last week, learned that Ana was an avid orchid aficionado who had the fortune to be born in a country where the number of orchid species outnumbered even the prodigious number of butterflies. The diversity and ecology of the various thousand plus plant species had been part of the reason she'd become a botanist in the first place.

Stephen was still speaking. "Seriously, I still don't know how Sara spots them. The flowers couldn't have been larger than a dime."

Grissom did. Practice, practice, practice.

Sadly, Sara's eye for detail had not been a skill honed in searching for thumbnail sized flowers. But even the smallest orchids were still far larger than much of the trace evidence they typically collected at a crime scene.

At least that explained where Sara had disappeared off to that morning. Apart from where she had scribbled:

_We saved you some breakfast. Try and stay out of trouble._

_--S_

at the very end, all Grissom had been able to make out of her note was

_Be back later this morning. Out with Ana to..._

before the rest of the sentence had been cramped beyond all hopes of legibility into one corner of the scrap paper she'd used to compose the note. He'd smiled and shook his head as he read it, both rueful and cheered at the fact that some things never really did change, Sara's chicken-scratch being one of them.

He didn't have the opportunity to indulge much in remembrances, however pleasing, as Stephen was saying, "She and Ana should be back soon. Surely between the two of you, you can find something to do today that isn't work related. Ana's injunction, not mine," he hurriedly qualified.

Grissom had to work to hide his grin. Apart from that sheriff-issued suspension he'd gotten nearly eight years ago, he'd never had a boss order him _not_ to work before and even then, he'd worked through the suspension anyway, as well as through most holidays over the years and now that he thought about it, what had he done during his last leave of absence? Work.

Too bad Sara wasn't here, he mused. She would have probably found the whole exchange terribly amusing and thought that after all the times he had issued the same directive to her over the years, it was high time someone did the same to him.

"Unless," Stephen added with the commiserating half smile of a man who knew the state all to well from personal experience, "You are still in the doghouse --"

The grin was really getting hard to control now, even though in truth, Grissom wasn't, at least at this particular moment, actually in the doghouse. He hadn't been for the better part of a day, thank goodness. He did, however, suddenly have the uncanny feeling that in their nearly ten years of marriage, Stephen had probably spent plenty of time on the wrong side of Ana. Of course Grissom knew that the occasional and even frequent banishment (or the threat there of) to the proverbial doghouse was just one of those things that one had to face in any serious relationship, whether you were married or not. Grissom also knew all too well that he was lucky that Sara was often quick to forgive, even if not always so ready to forget.

When Grissom made no immediate reply, Stephen rose and said, "Anyway, Ana and I are going to be away for the rest of the day. And the guys and Bridget should be out of your hair for a while at least. So..."

Grissom nodded, closed his notebook and began clearing up the specimen trays. He knew when to concede defeat. There were just some fights you couldn't win so there was no point in trying. Besides, a day alone with Sara wasn't something he was about to protest, complain about or pass up.

He just needed to find something to do to occupy himself until she returned.

*******

Grissom wasn't sure how, but somewhere and somehow in the midst of his clearing up, he'd managed to mislay his reading glasses.

He was in the midst of the painful process of searching beneath the cot in the tent (having thought that perhaps he might have knocked them off the table) when Sara entered.

"Lost something already?" she asked, seemingly having sized up the situation correctly.

When he peered up at her, it was to give her an _Isn't it obvious? _glare.

To which she only smirked and asked, "Your glasses?" in a knowing sort of way.

"It appears so," he replied, returning his attention underneath the cot.

He heard Sara place something on the table beside him before she padded her way to the other side of the bed. There was the scrape of her trunk on the ground and faint rummaging sounds before she straightened up and tapping him on the shoulder said, "Good thing I remembered to pick you up a spare pair while I was at the drug store yesterday. As you tend to misplace them," she continued smugly as she extended the pair to him.

As he couldn't rightly protest that wasn't the case, since his reading glasses were the one thing he did seem to always be mislaying, he merely accepted the new pair with alacrity and a slightly terse, but genuine _thank you_.

"Whatever would you do without me?" Sara teased.

Grissom was far too stiff and sore to come up with a witty or even ready reply to this. Plus, up until the week before, he'd been attempting to do just that -- live without Sara. It was not an experience he was all too keen on repeating any time soon.

Sara gestured to the bedside table as he rose. "You get your choice: pills or tea," she said. When he gave her an exasperated look she added, "Boss's orders."

There seemed to be a lot of that going on lately, he rued. His earlier predictions that Sara would have regarded the whole turnabout as being fair play turned out to be accurate as her next words were, "Now you know how it feels."

Grissom chose to ignore the dig. "Pills," he replied instead.

And she shook several tablets into his palm before handing him a Nalgene bottle full of purified river water. He received both with far less enthusiasm than the glasses.

"Is the tea really that bad?" she asked curiously before she gave the mug a tentative sniff. Then took a hesitant sip. Grimaced. "It really does taste like stewed grass," she spat. "I don't think even an entire can of sweetened condensed milk could improve the taste of that. I can see why you chose the pills."

His look seemed to say _See?_

Noticing the book that rested on top of the blanket, Sara said, "Would you like me to leave you to read in peace?"

"No," Grissom replied so quickly that there was no mistaking the fact that he was rather tired of all the hours of quiet, solitary resting.

"Have something else in mind?" she inquired.

"Nothing in particular. I'm open to suggestions."

Sara raised an eyebrow at this. But only said, more of a statement than a question as she had taken in how difficult his getting back onto his feet had been, "Your back still hurting you --" and for a moment, Sara thought Grissom might simply deny it, like he was so often prone to do, but he merely nodded.

She considered the options. As he was already sore and after all the activity of the day before and as she didn't want to tire him out further, exploring or even a walk was really out of the question. Cataloguing was out, too. Ana had made that plain enough, and work wasn't really all that much of a temptation this afternoon. It wasn't like there was TV or you could just go out to the movies. And it seemed such a shame to spoil the rare quiet with the radio. The book Grissom had left on the bed gave her an idea, although she wasn't all that interested in reading herself at the moment.

She motioned for him to take a seat on the ground, which he however awkwardly did. The hinges on the cot creaked in their usual protest when she clambered onto the cot behind him. As she passed him the book, she asked, "Tired of natural history already?"

"The mind cannot live on science alone," he quipped.

"That and you finished that book yesterday," she countered. He nodded. "Sit up a bit," she urged as her hands settled on his shoulders.

His eyes closed involuntarily at the feel of her thumbs at the base of his neck and he let out a soft, appreciative sigh, which caused Sara to smile in response.

Her amusement only grew, when in reply to her telling him, "But I wouldn't have thought pink was quite your color," he had turned to give her a bemused expression. She indicated the cover of the book in his hands. Apart from the large black lettering of the title, it was an almost florescent shade of Pepto-Bismol pink.

"It's not mine," Grissom replied. "Ana leant it to me a couple of days ago."

Sara sounded disbelieving. "Uh, huh," she said. But then she got a better look at the title.

_100 Love Sonnets_

_Cien sonetos de amor_

_by Pablo Neruda_

"Ah, sonnets," she sighed. "I should have known."

"For some reason," Grissom replied airily, "Ana's under the impression that you would enjoy it even if I read the phone book to you."

Sara laughed. "The phone book, no. But maybe the encyclopedia."

********

Before long, the afternoon became much like many of the lazy, quiet afternoons the two of them had shared back in Vegas over the years when they had no particular place to go or anything in particular to do. Grissom read mostly to himself, but every once in a while he shared a particular passage or page he found especially interesting or apt. These had always been some of Sara's favorite times -- those ordinary unassuming moments where the real enjoyment rested more in the company than the activity itself. While they were simple pleasures they were all that more precious and well appreciated because of their rarity.

She knew that most of her friends and colleagues would have regarded her and Grissom's outside of work activities to be woefully mundane. But for Sara -- and Grissom, too -- those peaceful hours simply spent in each other's company had been one of the greatest pleasures she had ever known. So she was beyond ecstatic to be able to possess them again.

Besides, there really was something winsome about the way Grissom's glasses rested on the end of his nose, something comforting in the steady, sure resonance of his reading voice.

He seemed to be sharing her sense of contentment, for the first lines he quoted to her were,

"'Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss,

what loneliness-in-motion, towards your company!'"

Sara had smiled at this. Then after a few minutes of rubbing his shoulders through the almost rigid cotton of his camp shirt, she leaned forward, and suggested as she attempted to undo the buttons at his neck, "This would be a lot easier if..."

Grissom seemed to agree. He put down his book long enough to finish with the buttons Sara couldn't reach and allowed her to help him peel the shirt from his shoulders.

She paused in the resumption of her ministrations to gape at the bruises along his right side.

"Wow, those are even more impressive than they were yesterday," she observed, then as she lightly traced her fingers along his ribs asked, "Still hurt?"

While he didn't exactly cry out in pain, he did flinch and flashed her a scowl that said, _You think?_

But his momentary irritation quickly returned to appreciation as she replaced her hands on his now bare shoulders. Her fingers weren't probing like they had been two days before, but gentle, and yet, the pressure was firm and deep enough to begin to start working some of the knots and stiffness away in that strange way that physical stimulation often led to relaxation -- at least when it came to muscles. But then Sara had always had nimble fingers and been very adept in working with her hands.

So that when she asked, "Better?" all he could do was hum, "Much," in reply.

After a while he murmured, "Someday I really need to thank which ever professor it was who assigned you to that study group."

"You mean the one with Peter the chiropractor's husband?"

"Yeah, that one," he replied. "As always, your diligence in the pursuit of knowledge shows, my dear."

"You've said as much before."

"It bears repeating."

Sara laughed.

Later, when he began to read aloud:

"'But when I hold you I hold everything that is --

sand, time, the tree of the rain,'_"_

she could hear his usual steady cadence begin to stutter a little. As she had at that moment chosen to replace her fingers with her lips at the base of his neck, his next words of

"'everything is alive so that I can be alive:

without moving I can see it all:

in your life I see everything that lives.'"

came out so breathy that Sara stopped to ask, "Is this bothering you?"

He gave a vague sort of reply. But when she then asked if he wanted her to stop, there was no mistaking his emphatic"No."

Although Sara's own motions and breath stilled when Grissom quoted, his own voice thick with feeling:

"'Before I loved you, Love, nothing was my own;

I wavered through the streets, among objects;

nothing mattered or had a name:

the world was made of air, which waited.

I knew rooms full of ashes,

tunnels where the moon lived,

rough warehouses that growled _Get lost_,

questions that insisted in the sand.

Everything was empty, dead, mute,

fallen, abandoned, and decayed:

inconceivably alien, it all

belonged to someone else -- to no one:

till your beauty and your poverty

filled the autumn plentiful with gifts.'"

Then silence.

Silence as his words, their meaning, his intentions sunk in.

Sara's mind, which was the only part of her still operating at the moment, flashed back to that last sonnet he'd had her read only days before. The words had been written centuries apart, but the sentiment was the same: _Without your love I have nothing, am nothing; but with your love, I have and am everything. _

Her eyes closed. They began to fill with tears anyway. But not unhappy tears.

She felt his hand close over her own, him lift it from his shoulder and press a kiss into her palm. Her own lips twitched at the corners in response, her only reply as she couldn't even managed to get his name past her lips.

Of course there were times when words were overrated.

He gave a startled sort of query of "Tired of my reading?" when she slipped off the cot and got to her feet.

Sara shook her head. She had only gone to untie the knots holding the tent flaps open. Once the fabric draped shut, she refastened the ties from the inside. She padded in the now dimness back towards the table. There was the slight rattle of glass and ceramic when she misjudged the distance and bumped into it on accident. But then there was the click of the lantern and a spot of light illuminated the area near the cots. Grissom blinked in the now seeming bright light as he peered curiously up at her. Sara only smiled and motioned for him to scoot forward. She took up her position behind him, this time on the floor. He heard the rustle of fabric, then the snapping of several clasps and was about to turn to her when she told him to keep reading.

Although he may have cracked open the book again, reading suddenly became a whole lot harder to concentrate on, especially when he felt the contrasting smoothness of her bare skin and the taut firmness of her exposed nipples play against his back.

"Sara --" he almost gasped.

And while Grissom wasn't normally one to take a pass on the opportunity to have an afternoon of lovemaking with Sara, his body was vehemently determined to remind him in no uncertain terms that was perhaps not the best of ideas at the moment.

Sara seemed to sense his hesitation, for she sighed as she said, "Don't worry. That wasn't what I had in mind. I was paying attention in the doctor's office after all. So relax, Gil. Just read," before she leaned in, her voice now low and breathy and whispered into his ear, "Besides, I am not _that_ insatiable, dear."

He was about to inquire further after her intentions when the heat of her breath and the softness of her lips caressed along his neck as she drew him towards her until his back rested against her chest and he realized that Sara had a very different sort of lovemaking in mind. One that was more sensual and tender rather than sexual and was ultimately an expression of the need and desire for that quiet closeness they had only ever shared with each other. It was as ever an act of intimacy that Grissom found equally, although differently, as satisfying as sex.

After a while, he said, almost breathless himself, "I think I am starting to see where the whole concept of a kiss making it all better comes from."

She chuckled against his skin.

And the book lay in Grissom's lap, forgotten.

"I don't think I want to know where you learned how to do this," he murmured as he shifted slightly to allow her further and easier access.

Even though she knew he couldn't see her, Sara rolled her eyes anyway before replying, "Books are wonderfully useful things, Gilbert. When applied properly."

"I don't remember you having any books on --"

She cut him off with: "I didn't. You do. Or did at least. And if I recall correctly, there were a quite a few volumes in your collection that would have made even Catherine blush."

Sara was exaggerating slightly and they both knew it. That of course didn't keep Grissom from protesting, "They were purely for academic purposes," to which she gave an incredulous cough. "There is nothing scandalous about art, archeology or anthropology," he insisted.

"This from the man who said that the frescos at Pompeii were more explicit than modern porn," she countered amusedly.

As this was indeed true, he couldn't exactly deny it. Or having had read Boccaccio or translations of ancient Sanskrit treatises on love and the more exotic forms of lovemaking. Consequently, he was almost relieved when it appeared that Sara in saying, "Now that I think about it," was going to change the subject, until she followed it with "It was more experiential actually. How I learned. Book learning can only come in so handy without practical application of the principles."

His "I see" spoke volumes. Sara had to choke back a snicker before she hurriedly clarified, "On you," and then, "Of course."

"I'm not sure whether to be appalled or impressed," he intoned, indeed sounding a bit of both at the moment.

"Weren't you the one who was always preaching about seeing and doing things for yourself?" she offered. "And extolling the benefits of experimentation and empirical observation?"

"Empirical observation?" he echoed.

"Yes. Basic stimulus and response," Sara replied. "For example, I know that if I --" and she began to run the nails of both hands up his chest, causing Grissom to inhale sharply in reply. "That is likely to happen," she finished knowingly.

This time his "I see," was more enthusiastic than anything.

*******

When Grissom woke later that afternoon, it was to find Sara sitting beside him at the head of the bed with her legs curled under her and the shirt he had been wearing earlier draped haphazardly over her shoulders.

As he eased himself onto his back, the better to peer up at her, he grinned, recalling exactly how they had both made it into bed in the first place.

Sara's teasing had soon given way to tenderness again. Whether it had been the light play of her fingers, the warmth of her skin against his or the sedating properties of the pills, Grissom had felt the tension and ache in his body begin to fade, felt a wave of relaxation and contentment and ultimately sleepiness settle over him so that when she had suggested bed, he hadn't protested.

Careful of his still sore side, she had curled up beside him, wrapped her arms around him and molding herself into the curve of his back, snuggled close. Her fingers lightly playing over his chest as if even after all this time, she was unable to get enough of the feel of him beneath her fingers.

He had sighed, closed his eyes, threaded his own fingers through hers. And feeling her press a kiss against his bare shoulder was soon fast asleep.

"Should I start looking for a new robe for you?" he asked the very real and present Sara as he fingered the hem of his shirt. Even though her head was bent and her hair fell over her cheeks, concealing much of her face, he could still see her smile. "I see you've managed to commandeer my book as well as my shirt," he added. "Find anything good?"

She indicated for him to slide closer and rest his head in her lap before she began to flip through the pages in search of the sonnet she was looking for.

"You keep teasing me about my Spanish," she said. "Shall we try out yours?"

When he didn't protest, she commenced to read in her best attempt at faltering Spanish,

"'Sabrás que no te amo y que te amo --'"

Grissom paused to consider her words for a moment before replying, "'You know I do not love you... and I love you.'"

Sara peered over at the right side of the book to check his translation. "Close enough," she said and then read,

"'Puesto que de dos modos es la vida --'"

"'Since that there are two...' '_modos'_?" he seemed to query more to himself than to Sara.

"_Sides_, I think," she offered anyway.

"'Since that there are two sides to life.'"

"'La palabra es un ala del silencio --'"

"'The word is one... wing... of silence.'"

"'El fuego tiene una mitad de frío.'"

"'Fire has its cold half,'" he finished, but at the almost seeming smirk he was giving her, Sara didn't continue.

Instead she asked, "What?"

"Your Spanish really is as bad as you keep saying it is," he replied truthfully. Perhaps a bit too truthfully, so that he had to hurriedly add, "It was an observation, not a complaint, dear."

But she decided to stick to the English translations from then on out.

"'_I love you in order to begin to love you,'"_

She began, her hand absently smoothing his hair as she continued to read:

"'to start infinity again

and never to stop loving you:

that's why I do not love you yet.'"

Grissom picked up the last stanza, seemingly from memory:

"'My love has two lives, in order to love you:

that's why I love you when I do not love you,

and also why I love you when I do.'"

When Sara appeared dumbstruck at this, he said with a self-deprecating shrug, "It may not be Shakespeare, but it is one of Neruda's most famous poems."

Sara shook her head both bemused and amused.

Then her face and mien turned serious, almost sober again. "But this, I think is my favorite," she said, flipping back towards the front of the volume.

"'I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this --'"

It was now Grissom's turn to be rendered speechless as he considered her choice of lines. For Sara had always seemed to have such a sense of surety about her, had always seemed to know. Known what to do or at least what she wanted to do.

That love could exist without that -- that it had existed, simply because it did, awed and also humbled him. But he realized, too, that he no longer knew any other way than to love her.

Although it pained and strained him to do so, Grissom propped himself up onto his elbows. The kissed that followed though was well worth any trouble or physical discomfort.

His last rational thought before the light brush of lips turned into something more was that he was _really_ going to like Sundays.

*******

The afternoon had begun to wane and soon the others would return and all the usual chaos of camp and life would reappear to put at an end -- at least for now -- to their quiet hours.

Noting the lateness, the two of them opted for a quick shower. Because of the heat and humidity, even quiet afternoons doing little more than touching and reading still left a person in want of a shower. So they gathered up clean clothes and towels and headed off to the camp's makeshift bathing area. But a quick, strictly for hygiene sake shower didn't seem to be precisely what Sara had in mind. For she slipped behind to join him in the narrow stall and although there was barely enough room or water flow for one, Grissom made no comment, let alone any protest. He only smiled and handed her the washcloth so that she could get that one spot on his back that he could never quite seem to reach, before he returned the attention.

*******

Everyone seemed to stumble in as close to sunset as humanly possible, as if they all had wanted to squeeze every last moment of freedom, enjoyment and ease from the day.

When they did, they found a pot of _sopa negra_ bubbling on the cook stove, a large stack of freshly made corn tortillas covered by an upturned bowl to keep out the bugs and the table already set for dinner, apart from one end, where Grissom and Sara sat across from each other both seemingly intent on playing a game, that innocent activity belying any of the heat and ardency of earlier in the day.

Luis and Bernie merely shook their heads, not comprehending how anyone could get that excited about a game played with what appeared to be stones from the river where they gathered water. Bridget was desperate for a shower and even more desperate to beat the guys to it. But Ana and Stephen lingered to have a better look.

The game was indeed being played with river rocks, the smooth round ones that littered the bottom. Half of them were plain, unadorned in any way, but the other half bore in their centers neat deliberate circles filled in with thick permanent marker. Ana recognized the board they were using as the reverse of an old canvas bag that had once contained rice but was now covered in a series of oblong shapes enclosed by a rhombus. The rhombus was unfamiliar.

When Stephen dared to ask what they were playing, Grissom merely offered the single word, "Nash," as an explanation. Unsurprisingly, this conveyed little.

Although when Ana had queried, "Nash?" in order to prompt further elucidation, she -- and Stephen, too -- were both surprised when it was Sara and not Grissom who answered:

"Nash. A variant of Go developed at Princeton in 1947 by John Forbes Nash, Jr., the Nobel Prize winning mathematician."

As she continued to describe how Nash was a zero-sum two-person game with perfect information where it was a mathematical certainty that there would always be a single winner and a single looser and never the possibility of a tie, Ana and Stephen met each other's gaze and both of them were thinking there really were just some people who were made for each other.

*******

_Author's Note: _100 Love Sonnets: Cien sontos de amor_, by Pablo Neruda is indeed a real book, translated by Stephen Tapscott and published by The University of Texas Press in 1986. The lines quoted in this chapter are from sonnets II, VIII, XXV, XLIV and XVII respectively. Like Nash, Neruda was a Nobel Laureate (in Literature) and is today considered to be one of the finest poets of the 20th Century in any language._

_In 1952 Parker Brothers marketed a version of a game similar to Nash called Hex. I would love to get my hands on one. _


	17. Seventeen: Field Day

**Seventeen: Field Day**

Both Ana and Sara seemed to take the doctor's stricture for Grissom to avoid anything strenuous for a few days seriously. So Monday found him confined to camp for the duration. And while desk duty was not something he usually particularly relished, the cleaning, sorting and cataloging of insect specimens had yet to lose its novelty and probably wouldn't for some time as he was still more than a little in awe of the diversity of their basic collections.

That and Stephen had pulled out what he had tongue-in-cheek dubbed the camp's UFIs and UCIs (Unidentified Flying and Unidentified Crawling Insects, respectively -- Stephen wasn't all that particularly crazy or knowledgeable about bugs) for Grissom to take a crack at. Grissom hadn't been all that surprised to find that few were easily identifiable beyond the genus level. After all, there were more than 4,000 identified species of insects in Costa Rica and he was bound to come across a few unidentified ones at some point. He'd made a mental note to remember to write to Catherine so she could send those couple of boxes of books he had put aside while he had been packing up his old office. They would certainly come in handy now.

He'd taken a break around two to start on dinner. As they had a ready supply of fresh vegetables from his trip to _la feria _with Sara on Saturday, he thought a simple stew might be a pleasant change from their usual _gallo pinto_-centric meals.

Later that afternoon, as he was adding the last of the potatoes, he had to suppress a smile as he thought back to that morning and how Ana and the others had greeted his offer to cook with a great deal of enthusiasm. There was of course a caveat. As apparently Sara had once told them all about his not always infrequent predilections toward entomophagy, the rest of the camp made it very clear that they had no interest whatsoever in actively eating insects. Unlike Sara whose objections tended more towards the ideological, the others' were predictably aesthetic. For while it was one thing to accidentally ingest an ant or two because the six-legged buggers somehow managed to make their way into everything, eating bugs on purpose was, just as he was informed by Bridget, "Gross."

He was replacing the lid on the pot when he heard the sound of voices and footsteps coming from the main path. So it wasn't Sara's appearance in the camp kitchen that took Grissom by surprise, although it was her appearance and perhaps it wasn't exactly surprise that he was feeling.

She'd emerged from eight hours of toiling in the near 100% humidity looking hot and sweaty and yet utterly at ease in it. As he watched her drink deeply from a large Nalgene bottle and brush the back of her hand across her forehead, he decided that he needed to amend his once previous pronouncement that sweaty wasn't sexy.

His appreciative grin turned amused as he noticed that she had somehow during the course of the day managed to get a smudge of dirt along her right cheek. It reminded him of how frequently she'd end up getting covered in oil and grease when she used to dismantle cars in the lab garage. Since it was one of those sights he found more endearing than anything, he didn't bother to mention it to her when she leaned in to give him a kiss hello.

"Feeling better?" she asked with a warm smile.

"Much."

"It's amazing what a little rest can do," she quipped, then gesturing to the signs of his cooking asked, "Tired of cataloging yet?"

"No, just checking on dinner."

Her grin only grew. "Good. I'll tell Ana that you're fine with another two straight weeks of it. Just in case."

An eyebrow went up at this. "You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?" she replied in what he was starting to discern to be mock seriousness. Her next words were even more blatantly teasing, "But it's too bad you aren't getting tired of it. If you were, Ana thought you might like to spend tomorrow out in the field with me instead."

"Then yes, I am very tired of cataloguing."

Sara laughed.

"So how did you manage to score that assignment?" Grissom asked after a moment.

"Day with the newbie?" Sara shrugged and sighed. "It was inevitable I suppose. But I think they were trying to put it off for a while."

"Afraid I might distract you from your work?"

She shook her head. "I have the feeling that they thought it more politic for someone other than me to be the one telling you what to do."

"I don't have a problem with you being boss," he said simply, and genuinely meant it.

Still, Sara queried, "Really?" unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

"It's nice actually," he admitted. "Not having to be boss for once."

"Wait until you've had dung duty for a month," she countered, but the prospect didn't seem to faze Grissom in the least.

"So what's the reason for the sudden change?" he asked curious.

"They seem to think I'm the only one who can keep you out of mischief."

"I rather think they're afraid of incurring your wrath."

"Funny."

*******

The stew had been a hit. That night the post dinner activities seemed to settle into the work-related rather than the recreational. Bernie had dish duty. Ana and Stephen huddled over their laptop, struggling to line up their GPS data with the topographic maps of the area, as sadly GoogleEarth didn't cover the Costa Rican rainforest. Bridget, being neither a math major, nor all that keen on statistics, was having trouble with running her standard deviation calculations on her primate data. Sara having been both, volunteered to help her. When Grissom decided to get a head start on processing the specimens that had been brought back that afternoon, Luis had gamely offered to assist him.

A little before ten, Sara got up, stretched and wandered over to the table where Grissom and Luis were still busy at work.

She yawned and resting a hand on Grissom shoulder, said, "I'm going to bed. You two don't work too late."

Grissom mumbled about wanting to get a bit more done. He watched Sara go for a moment before returning to his cataloging. Once she was out of earshot, Luis, who had been sitting across from him, looked up.

He began in rather unsteady English, "You are looking a tired, Dr. G. It is late. You should go to bed. The work will be here tomorrow."

Grissom gave Luis a rather rueful smile. The young man was correct on all counts. It was late and he was tired and the work would still be there when he got up. He really should go to bed.

He was about to begin to pack up the insects he had been examining when Luis said, "I will do it. You go. It is not good to leave a lady waiting."

*******

Sara was in the process of getting ready for bed when Grissom entered their tent. He stopped short in the entranceway, the better to watch her tug her bra out from under her tank top. She caught him at this, smiled and shook her head.

"Why does that always seem to amaze you?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It just does."

She started to shake out her cotton pajama bottoms, just in case an errant insect or two had decided to take up residence.

"I thought you still had worked to do," she said.

"It'll keep," Grissom replied.

At the incredulous look she gave him, he merely nodded. Sara chuckled softly and said, "Who are you and what have you done with Gil Grissom?"

From the laugh, the smile she was giving him and the lightness in her voice, he could tell she was more pleased than perplexed by his decision.

"You know that hypocrisy doesn't suit you, dear," he replied with a smile of his own.

Sara rejoined, "This from the only person I've ever known who works even more than I do."

"Things change. Times change. People change."

She nodded. "Yeah, they do."

"After all, you know what they say about change."

"No, what?" she said, although she was already sure of his reply.

"_The only constant in the universe_ --"

"_Is change_," they finished together.

Sara grinned. "Don't change too much though," she said. "I rather like you just the way you are. Well, most of the time," she qualified.

"You mean as long as I stay out of trees."

"As long as you keep from falling out of them, yes."

As she bent to tug off her work pants and replace them with the sleep ones, she noticed that Grissom's eyes had once again settled on her in the same almost rapt way they had when she had expertly removed her bra through her shirt only moments before.

"See something you like?" she teased. He only smiled in reply. It was that rare sort of smile that revealed the dimple in his right cheek.

But soon Sara's mirth turned into a long sigh as one warm hand slid around her waist while his other brushed her now short hair from the back of her neck and Grissom leaned in and nuzzled her there. She was about to turn and kiss him eagerly in response when her sense of prudence returned.

"Gil," she murmured and reluctantly disengaged herself. "You do remember what the doctor said."

It was his turn to sound amused. "That wasn't what I had in mind," he countered. When she peered back at him in disbelief, he added blithely, "Now who needs to get their mind out of the gutter?"

This time when Sara sighed, "Whatever am I going to do with you?" it was with much fondness and very little real exasperation. Then taking in his half unbuttoned shirt she said, "Does this mean you are coming to bed?"

Instead of answering, he kissed her.

*******

It was still dark when Grissom woke the next morning, crawled out of bed and after quickly dressing in the lantern light, went in search of Sara. It was a short search. She was right where he expected her to be: sitting at the same table he had been using the night before. And already engaged in that morning's cataloging work. He stopped behind her, smoothed her hair, ran a thumb down her neck before his palm came to rest on her shoulder and he leaned in to place a long lingering kiss on her cheek.

"You been up for long?" he asked.

"Not too long."

"Define _Not too long_."

Sara glanced down at her watch before replying, "About twenty minutes, half an hour."

Grissom took a seat across from her, notebook and pen in hand, his reading glasses already perched upon the end of his nose, before observing, "You've been sleeping better."

"Only since you've come," she smiled.

"Didn't take long for me to put you to sleep again then."

She shook her head. "Nope."

With the ease and natural rhythm that had come from working so closely with each other over the years, they soon settled into what was quickly becoming their morning routine. For Grissom appreciated the quiet just as much as Sara did and they both took pleasure in the company. Over the following days and weeks, the others simply got used to seeing the two of them at work first thing in the morning. Luis, Bernie and Bridget didn't quite understand it, but Ana and Stephen did.

*******

Sara and Grissom hiked out on their own just after breakfast, Ana having wanted them to collect and set bait traps in a couple of the nearer plots before they headed in the afternoon over towards the newest one to investigate the best locations for future traps.

Despite her concern that Grissom might have problems keeping up, as she was the one who knew the way, Sara led the way. She needn't have worried. For as they walked his hand seemed to consistently hover near the small of her back. She found its presence oddly reassuring.

Grissom found that every time he went out, for the first few hours at least, before the heat and humidity began to take their toll, he couldn't help but walk around in a state of perpetual wonder. It had been a long time since he'd felt that rush and flush of energy at work.

For it was beyond real, the rainforest. And not in a fantastical or grand sweeping romantic way. It was just something that you couldn't take in all at once and just when he thought he had already caught sight of the most spectacular of things, he'd turn a corner and come across something even more striking. He'd found, too, that words, language, even thought, were inadequate. It was all so overwhelming -- the abundance of everything -- the plants and trees and flowers, the insect life and birds, an explosion of life in all its diversity.

Needless to say, the forest was far different a world than Vegas. The green was, there was no other word for it -- _alive --_ and omnipresent and yet there was something oddly calming about being surrounded as they were. Here everything was verdant and lush, the forest so thick that in some places they could only see thirty feet in front of them as everything else disappeared under a veil of darkness. The trees towered, some more than fifteen stories tall, their branches forming the buttresses of vast living cathedrals. Vines and epiphytes wound their way skyward towards the leaf-woven canopy. The forest even had a language of its own, one of bird song, insect hum, and occasional monkey chirp.

Often Grissom would wonder what tales the forest would tell if only people possessed the patience to stop and wait and listen.

Although it really was too hot and humid to stand still in one place for very long.

At a rustle in the sparse undergrowth, he and Sara paused. The sinewy curve of a boa slithered along the forest floor. They watched it go in awe rather than fear, Grissom of course not the least bit afraid of snakes.

Not too much later, he did however stop dead in his tracks. His face screwed up in puzzlement and he took several short, quick sniffs through his nose as if he had caught an unusual scent.

"What?" Sara asked.

"You don't smell that?" he said.

She shook her head. Grissom motioned for her to backtrack towards him.

"Over here. It smells like... garlic," he said still perplexed.

"Ah," Sara replied with a knowing sort of expression. "It's the tree," she said.

It was his turn to query "What?"

"The tree. It's _Caraocar costaricense_. The Ticos call it _el arbole de ajo _-- the garlic tree, since its bark smells like garlic."

When he continued to look both bemused and yet impressed, Sara shrugged and said, "You aren't the only one whose head is full of useless information." At the now challenging look he was giving her, she hurriedly amended, "Seemingly useless."

To which Grissom only rejoined, "Speak for yourself."

Sara used the back of her hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead. "You were right though. About the whole there being a difference between wet and dry heat thing. But don't let it go to your head, Gil."

His seemingly innocent expression seemed to say that he wouldn't dream of it.

******

Around noon they stopped to take a break and have something to eat, having found a spot that looked to be fairly free of anything that might want to bite, sting, swarm or scratch them if they sat down, but they put down a piece of plastic tarp just in case.

Sara, having carefully repacked the remains of her lunch things, turned to Grissom and asked, "Has it changed much?"

"Working in the rainforest?" he queried in reply before saying, "Yes and No. The science is still the same. The tech is a lot different." Then he added with a slight grin, "The company has vastly improved."

Sara returned his smile. But his expression turned wistful, almost pensive as he said, "I've really missed working with you."

"It's been a long time," Sara conceded with more than a twinge of regret in her voice.

"Too long."

She nodded.

Suddenly, Grissom seemed to be struggling with exactly what he wanted to say. "It's... It's just... I always did enjoy working with you," he finally said. "Well, most of the time."

"You mean except for those years when we were avoiding each other at all costs?" she asked, sounding chagrined herself.

It was his turn to query, "It wasn't that long, was it?" in a concerned voice.

"Felt like it."

He couldn't dispute that. "But," he began, a hint of a smile starting to tug again on his lips, "later, after you and I..." his voice trailed off as he met her gaze. "It was like it was in the beginning, only better."

Her eyes crinkled in delight. "Is that why you teamed us up alone together so often after you came back from Williams? Because you enjoyed my company?"

"Hardly. You were -- are -- a great criminalist, Sara. Don't ever forget that."

She flushed with the unexpected compliment. "We always did make a pretty good team, didn't we?" she said after a while.

"We still do."

Sara beamed. "You keep saying things like that and you really will become a distraction."

"Then you'll know how it feels."

*******

They were scouting the latest plot looking for a prime location for the laying of their last dung trap when something caught Grissom's eye. Sara was too busy musing over what the guys back in Vegas would say if they saw Grissom pulling dung duty, as she recalled all too well their grumbling and protests about Grissom assigning them tasks that had to deal with the less savory sides of life, like excrement. If only they could see Gil Grissom now.

Only when she vaguely heard him call her name was she even aware that he had wandered off. It wasn't until the second time, when he spoke with far more insistence and force than usual, that brought her coming almost at a run, as she immediately feared that something had to be horribly wrong.

But it wasn't. Far from it.

When Sara was finally able to find her voice again, it was to whisper in both awe and amazement, "It's... It's just as you said."

And it really was. Really was as if the earth and sky had changed places.

For a rabble of blue morphos were making good use of the uncommonly large swath of sunshine created when one of the emergent level trees had collapsed under the weight of its own canopy and the vines that had clung to it.

The brilliantly blue butterflies were seemingly content to spread their wings wide and sun themselves, the better to keep warm, Sara knew. For as they lacked the ability to internally regulate their own body temperatures, they used each of their nearly three inch wide wings as giant solar collectors. She knew too, that in reality, the blue morphos weren't really blue at all. They just appeared so because of the way the transparent diamond shaped scales on those same wings refracted the natural ambient light. But all the science didn't make the moment any less magical.

But not nearly as blindingly astonishing as when the rabble almost nearly as one suddenly took flight. There was the whisper of wings, an instant where the butterflies all seemingly seemed to vanish, before those wings spread wide again and strobed electric-blue, flashed mirror-bright and they were gone.

It was only after the morphos had vanished that Sara realized her camera still hung limply around her neck. In all those moments, minutes even, she hadn't once thought to snap a photo. Though she doubted she'd need a picture to remind her.

She felt Grissom's hand slip into hers and turned to him, found his face full of the same marvel and amazement she knew had to be on her own.

"Gil," she whispered, not having the words, any words, for something that had been beyond breathtakingly beautiful.

He reached up with his free hand and brushed a damp stray strand of hair back behind her ear before pressing a kiss into her palm.

*******

When Grissom and Sara stumbled into camp close to five that evening, they were hot, sweaty, ecstatic over the day and their discoveries and desperate for a shower. Freshly scrubbed and dressed, Grissom went to see if Ana, who had pulled kitchen duty that day, needed any help. She shooed him off. He wasn't sure where Sara had gone, but Bridget was sitting at the worktable absorbed in a puzzle book. He took a seat across from her and tried to work out precisely what sort of puzzle it was, albeit upside down. But while he soon noticed that she used letters there were no clues like traditional crosswords.

"Alphabetical sudoku?" he queried curiously.

Bridget flashed him the cover as she replied, "Codecrackers. _Crosswords without clues_ or so they advertise. It's more of cipher thing though. A Kiwi friend of mine got me hooked once and I've been hopelessly addicted ever since. Want to try one?"

"I... I couldn't," Grissom said. But when Bridget continued to look knowingly expectant he said, "Well, maybe just one."

She tore a page from out of the puzzle book and began explaining how it worked. It was simple enough. Each letter of the alphabet corresponded to a single number, one through twenty-six. Once you knew which letter belonged to which number you proceeded to fill in all the squares containing that number to ultimately form words. The thing was, all the puzzle makers provided to start off with was one or two letter-number codes. The other twenty-four combinations had to be worked out from there.

"So not only do you need to have a pretty good vocabulary," Bridget finished, "you also have to have a sense of letter frequencies."

She handed Grissom her pencil and he began to fill in the letters provided for the numbers twelve and twenty-five, _N_ and _H_, respectively.

"If you need another letter," she added, "they list one in the back of the book."

But Grissom didn't seem to hear her and was so engrossed in working out the puzzle that he didn't notice Sara come right up behind him.

Sara on the other hand noting Grissom's extreme state of preoccupation, shot Bridget a mischievous grin before she ran her nails up his neck and into his hair. Grissom gave an involuntary shiver in response. When he peered up at her his eyes and own smirk told her she was going to be in for it later. Sara simply smiled unconcernedly in return. Bridget however hurriedly rose and asked if either of them wanted any tea. They both nodded.

Sara took a seat next to Grissom and peered over at the puzzle, herself quite curious. He briefly explained how it worked and by the time Bridget returned several minutes later she found the two of them utterly riveted.

Sara was saying, "Thirteen is _A_. See you get _adept_, which makes seventeen _T_."

Bridget couldn't help but laugh.

"You know who would love these," Grissom began.

"Hodges," both he and Sara chimed.

*******

At the dinner table that night their tale about the morpho sighting brought with it equal measures of envy, incredulity and disappointment in that Grissom and Sara hadn't thought to take a picture.

*******

After dinner and once the dishes were done, Bridget, still pleased and amused at their reaction to her puzzle book, asked Grissom and Sara if they were up for a game.

"As long as it's not chess or poker," Sara replied.

"How about Speed Scrabble?" Bridget suggested, to which Sara eagerly nodded.

Grissom looked nonplussed. "Speed Scrabble?"

"It's like traditional Scrabble in that you try to make words out of the tiles you have," Bridget explained.

"Like that Logos tournament four years ago, remember?" Sara interjected.

Like Grissom could have forgotten that. It wasn't just any day that a man died literally eating his words.

"Except you only play on your own tiles, want to have the lowest score possible at the end, there's no actual clock and every one plays at the same time."

"Very similar then," he quipped.

*******

Grissom, Sara and Bridget all continued to take and play tiles from the center at a fast and almost furious pace until the draw pile was empty.

"Got it!" Sara shouted. Grissom and Bridget looked up. Ana and Stephen who had come over to observe at some point in the middle of the game checked Sara's tiles. A grin spread over their faces, then Bridget's. Sara tried not to look too triumphant. Even Luis and Bernie who hadn't been paying attention, but had heard of Sara's victory from Ana, were beaming.

Later on, as he and Sara headed off to bed, Grissom said, "Is there a reason why they were all so excited that I lost?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Sara replied, trying hard to conceal her amusement. "I mean I won and Bridget lost, too," she pointed out.

He gave her a _you know exactly what I mean_ glare. Sara shrugged.

"All I know is you should have stuck with the jumbles, Gilbert," she grinned. "They come in handy."

Grissom, readily recalling his and Sara's ongoing debate over the superiority of certain kinds of puzzles, only sighed, "You do realize that you did have an unfair advantage in that game, dear."

"And I never would have pegged you for a sore loser, _dear_," she teased with heavy emphasis on the _dear_. "The reason everyone was so _excited_ -- your word not mine -- to see you lose, is the same reason most people are: you rarely ever do. It proves you aren't perfect, just human like the rest of us.

"Besides, it's good for you to lose from time to time. And I'm not talking about the times you lose on purpose."

"I never lose on purpose."

_Oh?_ her dubious gaze seemed to say. And he thought back. Perhaps there had been a time or two when he had...

"Only under extenuating circumstances," he amended.

"Like whenever you didn't want to get stuck sleeping on the couch?"

"And you thought I was a sore loser."

*******

A/N: Sadly, I did not invent Codecrackers or Speed Scrabble, but like Bridget became horribly addicted to the former (even more sadly I can't seem to find them in the U.S.). I picked up Speed Scrabble one generator-lit night in a tramping hut in New Zealand from one of the few Americans I ever met while over there, so where the game actually originates I have no clue. But it is simple enough to play.

All you need are the tiles from a Scrabble game and a pencil and paper for each player. There is no real limit to the number of people who can play at a time, but four is a comfortable number. You lay all the Scrabble tiles face down in the center of your playing space and mix well. Everyone starts with five tiles. The goal is to make them into words using the Scrabble rules – words can only be formed vertically or horizontally and you play as if you have your own Scrabble board in front of you. Each time someone has used all of their tiles they call out "take two" and everyone takes more tiles and tries to add these to the words/tiles they already have. This continues until all the tiles have been used. The first person to use all their tiles ends the game and the score is based on the letters you didn't use rather than the words you created.

It's fast and furious but really fun. And yes, as my husband will readily tell you, I really am a huge word freak…


	18. Eighteen: Emergence

**Eighteen: Emergence**

"I hope this means you're feeling better," Sara said as she stumbled still slightly sleepy into the work area not long after five a.m.

Grissom paused from where he was busy packing one of the camp's equipment cases and gave her a brief, but obviously amused grin. "Good morning to you too, dear," he replied and quickly returned his attention to a handwritten list in front of him. With his usual businesslike brusqueness, he proceeded to check off several items.

Taking in the assortment of neatly laid out chemicals, empty glass collecting bottles and phials, she sighed, "Do I even want to know what you're doing?"

His only reply was to ask, "You up for an all-nighter?"

She let out an uneasy sort of laugh. "You must _really_ be feeling better."

He peered up over his reading glasses. "Just answer the question, Sara."

"Why do I get the feeling you're plotting an experiment?"

He shrugged. "The morphos yesterday gave me an idea. Don't worry. It'll be just like old times."

"Without the dead bodies," Sara intoned.

"Without dead human bodies, yeah."

The way he had added the word _human_ to _bodies_ didn't sound exactly promising.

"This doesn't involve a dead pig again does it?"

"No dead mammals of any kind," he assured her. When Sara still seemed hesitant, Grissom added, "It will be fun, I promise. I already cleared it with Ana."

Considering the fact that the rest of camp was still fast asleep and Grissom had spent most of the previous night with her, this assertion baffled Sara slightly. "When did you manage to do that?" she wondered out loud.

"Last night when I was helping her clear the dinner table," he replied simply.

That didn't make the whole thing any less strange, but Sara shook her head, knowing all too well from experience that once Grissom got his mind fixated on a particular idea it was just better to go with it.

"Okay," she finally replied, although there was the slight hint of a tremor in the last syllable.

"Is that a yes?"

She nodded. "I may live to regret it, but yeah, that's a yes."

He grinned at her. "Good. Luis will take us out later this afternoon."

Normally, Sara wasn't prone to paranoia but it was starting to feel like everyone in camp had known about the excursion but her. She was about to bring up the possibility when something unexpected on the table caught her eye. She took up a black light bulb the better to examine it.

"Be careful with that," Grissom hurriedly cautioned.

"Where did you get this?"

"All Luis would tell Ana is that he borrowed it."

"Borrowed?" she echoed.

"Ana said she didn't want to know the answer so she didn't ask."

"I don't blame her," Sara replied. While she knew that Bernie and Luis had a knack for locating and appropriating things that could sometimes be difficult to find, she knew too it was better not to ask. Having plausible deniability was sometimes a very good thing.

"Wait a minute," she said as it all started to click. "Black light bulbs --" she began. Then her eyes passed over the large plastic sandwich boxes, paper towels and the neatly folded white bed sheet on the table. "We're going bug hunting aren't we?" she asked.

Grissom nodded eagerly. "More like bug luring, but yeah."

*******

It was late that afternoon when Luis accompanied Grissom and Sara as they hiked out to the location Ana had recommended for that night's collection activities. As there were just too many chances for getting into mischief or downright danger in the dark unless one stuck to the most developed of paths, they had left while there were still several hours of daylight remaining. That way there was a greater chance of avoiding things like roots to trip over, branches to hit your head on, rocks to stumble upon, and all the bushes and brambles guarded by any number of things that bit and stung.

It had been a rather uphill slog towards the end. Even with a few days of rest, Sara knew Grissom was struggling to keep up with Luis's longer and younger legs. Hell, even she was having problems doing the same. But true to form, Grissom refused to complain or suggest they slow down.

The climb had been worth it. Sara was literally dumbstruck as she stood on the crest of the hill and peered out into the valley below. In all the weeks she'd been in the forest, she had yet to glimpse the canopy from above. The undulating treetops stretched like a seemingly endless verdant ocean before them, swathed here and there with misty grey bands of clouds.

"Is this good?" asked Luis.

"It's perfect," Grissom replied in Spanish, his voice full and thick of the same almost breathless awe as Sara was feeling.

Although he couldn't be overcome to the point of distraction by the view for when she inched her way closer towards the ledge to get a better look, his tone turned concerned and cautionary.

"Be careful."

Sara shook her head in amusement, "This from the man who fell off a ladder."

"Humor me."

This she readily did, easily comprehending the source of his anxiety and seeing no need to exacerbate it.

Besides, this wasn't really the time for purely leisurely sightseeing. The sun would be setting soon and they still had work to do. So they each set to task.

As they would be spending the night out in the field, Sara set about locating a space fairly clear and free of underbrush to serve as a temporary campsite, while Grissom and Luis worked on setting up the lights and sheets for the collection work. To her surprise once he and Grissom had finished, Luis dusted off his hands, rose and telling them he would be back in the morning, wished them both a good night.

Sara asked, "You aren't staying?"

Luis only shook his head with a grin and hurried back the way they'd come, intent on returning back to camp before the sun went down. Sara, still slightly dumbfounded, watched him go for a moment before turning her attention to Grissom who was unpacking and arranging the assorted killing jars and collecting boxes with his usual unstudied nonchalance.

As she spread a large tarp on the ground before covering it with a layer of blankets, she sighed, "I'm starting to think that you and Luis are getting awfully chummy."

Grissom didn't deign to reply to this, but she could see the ghost of his own grin tugging at his lips.

Once he had everything neatly arranged and ready to go, he went to help her drape the mosquito netting over the makeshift campsite. They would certainly need it after sunset. Mosquitoes weren't part of their collection plan, but that wouldn't keep the bugs from trying to collect them. Usually the liberal dosing of homemade insect repellent would keep most of the pests away, but since he and Sara were out here to collect bugs and not repel them, using the stuff would have defeated the purpose.

As they worked, Sara inquired after Grissom's plans for the night.

"Moonset isn't until almost nine," he began. "Even with the moon at just a quarter full, there's no point starting until after then. Too much light interference."

Sara glanced down at her watch. "That's nearly four hours from now," she said.

"What do you have planned for us to do between now and then?"

"Dinner for one," he replied. He motioned for her to join him under the mosquito netting. "I had to improvise a little," he said as he sat and began to extract a thermos and several foil wrapped packets from a cooler bag.

Starting to get the sneaky suspicion that Grissom had something other than just bug collecting on his mind for the night, Sara said, "You arranged this whole thing on purpose, didn't you?"

"I had some help, but yeah."

Even with help, it was hard to imagine how Grissom had had the time to prep a collection excursion and what was rapidly appearing to be a date on such short notice.

"How did you...?"

"Sometimes being confined to camp for the day isn't always a bad thing. And no, before you ask, I haven't been shirking my work. Besides," Grissom smiled, "we've always worked New Year's Eve together."

That was true enough. But typically those evenings involved dead bodies. Dead human bodies. DUIs. Aggravated Assault. Date Rape. None of which were ever the least romantic.

Now that she thought about it, bug collecting was far more innocent and innocuous an enterprise, comparatively speaking. She wasn't quite as sure that it was really all that much more romantic though.

She let out another long heavy sigh and said, "Bug collecting is some romantic date, Gilbert."

Intentionally ignoring her not so latent sarcasm, Grissom replied, "Glad you approve."

*******

Once night had crashed, as it was always wont to do, they huddled under the shelter of the mosquito netting and as they watched the stars begin to wink and blink their way into existence, enthusiastically picnicked on the contents of Grissom's mystery tinfoil packets. They turned out to contain whole black beans, corn kernels, seasoned rice, slivers of grilled peppers and onions and the salty white cheese native to Costa Rica. They didn't bother to stand on ceremony and used their fingers to make and eat hand rolled tacos. Bernie had provided several thermoses filled with his atomic grade coffee, so there was no chance that either Grissom or Sara would be falling asleep any time soon. There had even been dessert -- _arroz con leche_, a simple dish made from leftover rice that had been soaked in a solution of warm milk, sugar and cinnamon.

Towards the end of the meal Grissom dug a single orange from the depths of his bag. Sara's grin only grew as she began to peel the fruit so that she was practically beaming when she handed him his half. He returned the smile, his own soft and warm and intimate, although his eyes were even more so.

Before long the night reigned in earnest. The dark shadows of the treetops were tinged silver with the moonlight. The sky again alive with stars. As the moon began to sink further and further into the horizon, the wide swath, that ribbon of faint cloudiness that made up the Milky Way, resolved to wend its way like a winding river across the sky.

It was as if the two of them had stepped out of time and space into a far different place, a place where they were the only people alive in all the world. It was unusual feeling, for in Vegas, even with all its mad rush and press and garish glare, with all its hordes of strangers, one could only ever feel alone, although never be it. But here, there was something about the quiet, the stillness and that sheer solitary sensation that heralded something far different than loneliness.

They sat there for a while, enjoying the moment, silent. But it wasn't an uneasy or uncomfortable sort of silence, rather one of the companionable sort that had developed between them over the years. Tonight, the wordlessness seemed to hold all the things long said and unsaid, as well as all the things that didn't need to be said, but only felt and cherished and treasured.

Grissom had spent much of his life in silence, grown up with it, felt at home and at ease in the quiet of solitude and thought, of words on paper and most of the time, in the presence of the absolute silence of death.

But silences with Sara, they were unlike any other he had ever known.

So many things had passed between them in those moments. When they fought or retreated to their own corners to lick the wounds they had too often inflicted upon each other, those silences were hard fast walls, firm in their division.

However more often, the silences were sweet. They were not the sort to be filled or feared, but savored for all they bespoke - of time (both lost and found), of long knowing and ever new discovering, of both passion and stillness, with that which was well known and yet so seldom said.

Like love. Grissom knew he loved Sara. Had loved her for far longer than he had ever been willing to admit even -- and perhaps especially -- to himself. Of course _love_ seemed to have long been a word he knew, but never quite fully understood, never fully possessed or even desired possessing until he'd met her.

_Love_. It was such a small word for such a great thing, he mused.

Four letters spoken in a single breath. No wonder it so often felt inadequate, too inadequate, to convey what was in his heart or mind or soul.

Four letters in a breath to impart how still after all these years Sara managed to take his breath away. How wonderfully alive he felt with her. How her laughter and smiles, her touch and the taste of her when they kissed made the whole mad world stop and he could, if just but for that moment be.

And yet in some ways, in the present having and giving and being, love seemed all the more inexplicable now than it had ever been before.

Of course there were just some things that not even science could explain or reason measure. They just were. It had taken him a long time to accept the truth of that simple assertion. That science and reason and rationality were certainly no better at mapping the human being than all the words poets possessed. For science didn't even possess those four letters spoken in a breath to speak for them.

Sometimes, he wondered why there were so many words, so many ways to speak of anger and hate and fear, while at the same time, so few for laughter and smiles and love and hope and joy.

There were times, too, when he thought back to all the science fiction he'd read growing up and thought how handy telepathy could really be. For so often he'd wish that if only for a moment, Sara could see herself through his eyes, think his thoughts, dream his dreams, feel as he felt and know his heart. That way there would be no need for words then.

And sitting there with Sara, entranced by the stars and her presence, he recalled another of Neruda's love sonnets. This night, the words seemed to be even better bearers of truth. For he felt – no, knew - that even just this single moment here and now with her was worth all the days and weeks and months of waiting, wanting, hoping and dreaming.

Without realizing it, he found himself quietly intoning:

"'I love the handful of earth that you are.

Because of its meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

Your wide eyes are the only light I know

from extinguished constellations;

your skin throbs like the streak

of a meteor through rain.'"

Sara smiled at this, covered his hand with hers, threaded her fingers through his, thinking that it actually was a pretty romantic date, being together like this, waiting for the night to stir itself into life.

She shivered slightly as the temperature had dropped twenty degrees over the course of the afternoon and evening. Earlier Grissom had helped her into a light windbreaker before donning his own. Considering how he always seemed to run cold, Sara reasoned that if she was starting to feel the chill, so was he. So she pulled the thick blanket she had earlier lain at the foot of the improvised bed and proceeded to drape it over his shoulders in a way they both found hauntingly reminiscent of the time the two of them had kept vigil over that dead pig all those years ago. Except tonight, Sara nudged his knees together so she could better snuggle up beside him. Grissom slid an arm around her shoulder. And this time, they shared the blanket.

*******

After a while, the moon waned to the point that lamplight became necessary, but tonight, the usually brilliant white glow was tempered to a more smoldering red, the lighting color more of a practical adjustment. When Grissom had explained that while the red light wouldn't deter mosquitoes, it would, however, not attract other insects the way the unfiltered LEDs would, Sara had nodded in comprehension and said in a knowing sort of way, "So no more attraction under false pretenses," while in reality she had been more preoccupied remembering the way Grissom's eyes had lit up when he'd spotted Bridget peeling the red cellophane from a Christmas package nearly a week before.

And for the most part, the trick appeared to be working. In fact, it was working so well that Sara was starting to think that perhaps they should use the red lights all the time. For she had to admit that no matter how low they kept the lantern in their tent, the bugs would still be drawn inside. Even with the flaps closed, they made their way through the cracks and edges and frequently pummeled the mosquito netting in attempts to reach the light. Even if she and Grissom turned it completely off, the insects spent the rest of the hours until the moon rose trying to flee and escape back into the brighter night.

Then suddenly, a horde of pyrophorus beetles flitted past. At more than three inches in length, the insects were oversized cousins to the more conventional fireflies. But it was the inch and half long green glowing beams bright as pen lights that their illuminating chambers produced that made them most awe inspiring.

Perhaps bugs were romantic, too, in their own way, Sara mused. Or perhaps it was just Grissom that made them so.

The more she thought about it, for Grissom, bugs probably were romantic.

When she said as much to him, he gave her a puzzled look.

"No, it makes sense," she said. "The entomology textbook. That cocoon. The bees. The puzzle box. Tonight."

Although perhaps _romantic_ wasn't quite the right word. Each was perhaps more _intimate_ than anything, an invitation of sorts to become a greater part of his world and life.

Apart from the cocoon. Sara had never quite worked out what he had been trying to tell her with that one, particularly as he hadn't included a note in the package. And there hadn't seemed to be the time or occasion to ask about it before.

So she took advantage of the moment and before Grissom could make a response to any of her previous assertions, she asked, "Why exactly did you send it?"

"The cocoon?"

She nodded.

"It made me think..." he began.

"Of me?"

"No. Of me."

At her puzzled expression he said, "You know how a moth becomes a moth, right?"

Ignoring the seeming strange non sequitur of his question, Sara counted out the four stages on her fingers. "Egg, larva, cocoon, adult."

"Sounds simple right?"

"But it isn't, is it?"

"From a scientific standpoint, it is."

"But the cocoon wasn't meant to be a science lesson," Sara said.

"No, it wasn't."

"Good," she laughed. "Because you forgot to enclose care instructions when you sent it."

"You seemed to handle it just fine," Grissom replied with a smile.

"Gil, you do realize that there is no online database for identifying cocoons, right?"

He nodded. "Still, you didn't seem all that surprised after it hatched."

"Not half as surprised as Hodges was from what I could hear from your end of that phone call. What was he doing in your office in the first place? Feeding your pets?"

"Actually yes."

That had been during those couple of weeks just after Sara had gotten out of the hospital, when it had been both practical and prudent for Grissom to take some time off.

Sara queried in disbelief, "And with all the creatures you kept in that office, he was afraid of a little moth?"

"As _Antheraea polyphemus_ tend to have a more than six inch wingspan, I wouldn't exactly classify it as a_ little _moth."

"True."

"Besides, I think his response was more based upon the fact that he had somehow managed to let it loose." Grissom shook his head. "How, I still have no idea,"

"Hence the call and rescue mission at three in the morning."

"Yeah."

"Except I distinctly remember it being light by the time you got home. Did time get away from you or just the moth?"

"Mostly the moth," he admitted. "Until I figured out it was a male. Then it was easy. All I had to do was light a candle."

Remembering from the entomology textbook Grissom had given her for that Christmas several years back that by an odd coincidence, the light spectra a burning candle gave off mimicked the same infra-red frequencies present in the pheromones female moths produced, Sara smirked, "You mean you lured him under false pretenses."

"It wasn't nearly that sordid," he countered.

Her "Uh huh" didn't sound all that convinced. Then a thought struck Sara. "Wait a minute," she said. "Wasn't that about the same time Little Stevie went missing?"

Grissom nodded. In fact, that was exactly the same time one of his pet tarantulas appeared to have pulled a Houdini.

"Never did find him," he admitted.

"And yet," she grinned, "You didn't seem all that upset to find out that Hodges has your pig."

"She's in a jar," he replied. "There's not really all that much mischief he can get into with her."

Sara's frankly disbelieving raise of the eyebrow caused him to pause and reconsider that assertion for a moment.

At the now worried look that had descended on his features she laughed and said, trying to change the subject, "You were talking about moths..."

He seemed to welcome the segue, for Grissom nodded and said, "Well, being a moth isn't about _being_ a moth. It's about _becoming_ a moth. It's the whole purpose of its life from the moment it hatches from its egg.

"Of course when it does, a moth doesn't emerge as a thing of beauty or even anything that would hint of what it will later become. For all intents and purposes, it looks like a many-footed, hairy sort of worm. Hence the name _caterpillar_. From the French for '_hairy cat_.'

"Although," he said with a bemused shrug, "I've never quite understood what the connection is between moth and butterfly larva and felids."

As Sara was giving him that patient sort of look that indicated he was starting to ramble off topic, he shook his head and quickly continued saying, "But that doesn't really matter.

"That newly hatched larva has just one aim, one purpose to its existence. Well, two actually -- to eat and eat and eat -- and not get eaten. But even then, as it eats it's growing and changing.

"People tend to think that metamorphosis merely occurs while the caterpillar is inside its cocoon, but the reality is a moth is constantly changing and becoming even when it is still for all outward appearances a lowly caterpillar. For as it morphs from one instar to the next, it must shed that part of its old self and become made new again and again as it grows.

"Until it's time. Not time for it to be beautiful and finished and complete, but time for it to spin its microscopic threads and wrap itself up tight in order to cocoon itself from the outside world. To ostensibly disappear, hide, so that it came continue its process of becoming in private, or at least in some semblance of safety.

"Once that's done and the cocoon's complete, for all its outward appearances the moth appears dormant, as if it is merely waiting and resting. But inside, inside it is all chaos and change and not just growing, but transforming.

"That little worm-like larva's begun to sprout the legs and wings and antennae and all the other parts it will need to fulfill its destiny.

"It's a long process, particularly in those species that overwinter. Often significantly longer than all the eating that came before and frequently longer than the life it will live once it finally emerges from its cocoon.

"Lepidopterans have long been symbols of rebirth and regeneration. There's good reason why. For they are all born not just once, but twice. And that second birth is the hardest. Because a moth must then struggle to break free from the walls that have so long sheltered it. It must fight its way out of a cage of its own making and destroy the bonds it created for itself.

"Except when it does, it is only to arrive into the world damp and limp. And this is when the moth is at its most vulnerable, as it can barely move, let alone fly, until its wings at last begin to unfurl and dry and stiffen.

"Then it comes time for that first feeble flutter that proceeds actual flight. For ultimately the moth must fly or it will die.

"Truth is, it will die soon anyway. But not before it has completed that one task it has left - the whole purpose for everything that has come before. For while most butterflies feed and pollinate flowers, _Antheraea polyphemus_, like many moths doesn't - or even can't eat.

"Instead, its sole purpose is to find a mate. To search out others of its kind to couple and create.

"It's ironic that this last stage of life, when the moth has finally become its true self, is the briefest. Days, barely a week, sometimes a little more, is all it has before it uses up the last of its energy stores and dies."

Grissom paused then, his head bowed and his voice having faded into soft sadness. Sara reached up, slipped her hand around his cheek. His eyes fluttered closed at her touch.

"I never told you," he began again after a while. "In that letter you wrote about having spent your entire life with ghosts --"

Sara blanched slightly at this, but did not remove her hand and only waited for him to continue.

"And I understood, Sara. I understood because I _was_ a ghost."

She whispered, "That's what the guys said you told them you were in high school."

He shook his head at this. "Not just in high school. My whole life. Until I met you," he said meeting her eyes once more, "I was a ghost."

He turned his cheek to press a kiss into her palm.

"But I have been a moth, too," he added.

"After my father died, I spent my childhood devouring every bit of knowledge I could, every fact, every story, every _thing_ that could be known. That knowing was everything.

"Then the time came and I started to spin the threads to cocoon myself away from the rest of the world and somehow I knew to make it tight so I would be safe from prying eyes. Private. Private in my own awkwardness and fear in that pain of inevitable change.

"And to that rest of the world, it all probably looked still and calm and peaceful, but on the inside, I was struggling. Afraid. Uncertain of what I was to become and yet powerless to stop my becoming it.

"I spent a long time shut up in that cocoon. Nearly all of my adult life. Not daring to dream of possibilities. But eventually the time came to break free from all the confines I had created for myself.

"In nature that happens when the environmental conditions -- the light and heat and time -- are just right. For me, it was because I had finally begun to dream of those possibilities, of a life beyond the safe, cloistered existence I had known so long and well.

"It began when I began to dream of you.

"Of course it wasn't that simple. Even after I was able to struggle my way out, to emerge from those walls, I honestly didn't know what to do. I really didn't, Sara."

And he had told her as much that time in his office - _I don't know what to do about this_. For a long time Sara had regarded his words as a rejection of sorts rather than an admission of confusion. It was an error that had led to a great deal of sorrow and hurt on both sides.

"Gil," she began, but he motioned for her to let him finish.

"And I did come so close to it being too late by the time I really did figure it all out.

"But in the end, I had to take that chance and risk falling in order to have any hope of being able to fly.

"I suppose it is apt, too, that moths come to love and loving so relatively late in life, when youth and middle age is over – well youth, at least," he hurriedly amended, knowing that Sara tended to scoff every time he talked about being or feeling old.

"Sara, I've loved you for so long, but I couldn't let myself love or be loved, wings and air and all, until late. And sometimes I still feel the waste of all those years I stayed so safe and sheltered. But I know too that I would not trade the years I have had and will have with you for anything, whether they be many, or like the moth's all too few.

"For think of it, while they have but that week to live after all those weeks and months of becoming, what a week that must be - to be alive like that, fully to all of life's possibilities.

"That is what these last days have been like being here with you, just being with you again.

"So I guess what I was trying to tell you then with that cocoon was that you were the one, are the one person who gave me the reason to risk being."


	19. Epilogue: The Times They are AChangin'

**Epilogue: The Times They are A-Changin'**

Busy as they had been in executing what had ostensibly been the reason they were out in the middle of the rainforest in the middle of the night in the first place, midnight had come and gone and the new year begun without either Grissom or Sara knowing or realizing it.

There had been no fireworks, no ball dropping on Time Square. Of course there hadn't been murder or mayhem either. Just the mad rush and hurry of collection until the early hours of the morning. When exactly the two of them had collapsed onto their makeshift bed and fallen asleep, neither had known. And while the tarp and thinly blanketed ground had not exactly proven all that comfortable, they'd both been so exhausted that ultimately a bed was a bed. Besides, they had both slept in far worse conditions. At least here they had each other.

Just before dawn, Grissom stirred to find himself laying flat on his back with Sara using him as a pillow. Apart from the fact that his arm had gone numb and he had a rock pressing into one of his ribs, he didn't really mind.

It was certainly more enjoyable of an experience than the last time he had slept out in the field with only mosquito netting and the stars overhead. The company was certainly far better. Although the level of snoring was about the same.

So between the noise of Sara still sound asleep and the chorus of the insects they hadn't managed to capture earlier, it wasn't exactly a silent night. And yet a sense of peace and tranquility lingered all the same.

The trees surrounding them were strangely still. The as yet predawn hours as calm as the evening had been before and yet so unlike that night when he'd arrived in Costa Rica and stood under these same stars with Sara for the first time. Then the wind had rustled through the canopy around them until it was as if the trees were whispering to each other in earnest. Their shiver and dance had added another layer to the melody of the forest.

They were the Christmas winds. Sara had once explained how Ticos looked forward to them every year as they brought much welcomed relief from the seemingly omnipresent heat and heralded the beginnings of the dry season and a reprieve from the wet. They were winds of change much like the Santa Anas he remembered from all those years of growing up in Southern California.

And so much had changed even in just the last dozen days since that night. Still, Grissom knew there were more changes to come. Life was like that.

There really was no constant in the universe but change, as trite and clichéd as it might sound. But instead of fearing or dreading it, Grissom welcomed it. For while he was unsure of what the new year would bring, he was happy to know that he and Sara would face it together.

He drew her sleeping form tighter to him and bent to place a kiss into her hair. Sara stirred only long enough to softly sigh and nuzzle ever nearer.

Grissom smiled.

There were indeed times when dreams paled in comparison to reality. This was certainly one of them.

It wasn't until the last handful of days that Grissom quite appreciated the fact that all his weeks of imagining what it would be like to be with Sara again were not half as arresting as it proved to actually be with her. In the beginning, he thought that after the first couple of days it would lessen - that sense of wide-eyed wonder and breathless disbelief, and that a sense of normality, of the routine would return. It hadn't. Instead, when he least expected it, the simplest of things would start the rush and flush and blush all over again.

Perhaps Stephen was right. It was something that never did get better with time - this being and loving Sara like this. He thought, too, that it was equally true that he really didn't want it to.

*******

Sara had to admit that even after his repeated insistence that he didn't need or want to be boss, that over the next several days and weeks it was still strange to see Grissom taking directions and instructions. Although the foreignness seemed to be all on her side, for it appeared that he had no problem whatsoever shifting from the role of mentor and keeper of all knowledge (no matter how esoteric) to that of student.

Grissom was willing and eager to do anything. No task was too menial, boring or time consuming. Nothing was beneath him. Initially, she was surprised at some of the things he was willing to do, but she probably shouldn't have been. True, she had heard plenty about Grissom's _Take one for the team_ lectures over the years, mostly from the guys whom she would have thought to have been too tough to complain about such things when the time came to collect the more unsavory sorts of specimens.

But Grissom didn't complain about having to collect bait for or setting up the dung or other traps, even though Bernie or Luis would have gladly done it if he had asked or insisted. Except Grissom hadn't pulled rank, hadn't asked for special privileges or treatment because he had the _Ph.D_. at the end of his name or because he'd been practicing science long before either of the young men had been born. In fact, he never complained about grunt work, or the heat or much of anything at all. He cooked, cleaned, cataloged, collected, photographed, hiked all over. In some strange, twisted way that was yet so quintessentially Grissom at the same time, he enjoyed it. After the first couple of weeks of getting used to the heat and humidity and once he had grown accustomed to the rhythms of a very different sort of day, he seemed to have more energy than Sara had seen him display in years.

If the number and quality of his questions were any indication, he was genuinely interested in the work, fascinated by it all. But then Grissom had always been the sort who preferred questions to answers, the quest to the grail. And here he was in the middle of a great jigsaw puzzle that science was only beginning to tackle.

And yet, there was still an element of distance, a healthy sort of objectivity and proportion that tempered some of his more obsessive tendencies. Yes, he liked the work, was eager to do it, enjoyed it, but at the end of the day, he was able to put it aside in ways he hadn't been able to do in Vegas.

He worked hard as he was always wont to do, but he began to play hard too.

He joined in the sometimes impassioned dinner debates - sometimes arguing in English, sometimes in his rapidly improving Spanish, about everything from the state of science in society to the likelihood of a particular sports team actually having a winning season for once. Sara stayed out of the latter discussions, thinking perhaps it better that none of them should hold their breath. After dinner there were sometimes games: cards, chess, Speed Scrabble. A few Sunday afternoons had been taken up with dung beetle races much to everyone's eventual amusement. Other nights were spent in quiet reading or in listening, when there was no fútbol on the radio, to what would have been labeled in the U.S. as oldies music but what currently made up most of the contemporary musical fare on Costa Rican radio stations. There was frequently laughing, some good-natured teasing, too.

Sara didn't mind that she and Grissom didn't spend every waking moment together. They had never had the sort of relationship where that was necessary. Besides she was happy to see him interacting with the others, opening himself up more.

That wasn't to say that she didn't enjoy or take advantage of the time they had alone. They worked well together, as equal partners as they had in those last years in Vegas before she'd left. She enjoyed the little moments, the laboring side by side on the simple and sometimes mindless tasks.

Still, no matter how busy the days or how much there was to be done, they each took the time to be with each other. There were the occasional walks. The nights spent after the generator was shut down reading together or talking about everything and nothing or simply touching and being together.

Ultimately, Sara knew Grissom was, for lack of a better word, trying.

Or as he had one day told her, practicing.

When she had inquired after what exactly he was practicing, he'd told her _going with the living_. She had smiled at this and his still slightly chagrined admission that it wasn't always that easy a thing to do.

Sara however thought he was doing a pretty good job of it in any case. Besides, she knew it took a great deal of courage to simply allow oneself to be human - in all that entailed.

And she loved and admired him all the more for it.

There were small, subtle changes, too. Ones that probably only Sara could or would have noticed, having had worked and lived with and loved him for so long. And yet with all the changes, Grissom was still himself, and also so at ease and alive and comfortable in ways that she'd hardly ever seen him.

He'd begun to wear his shirts with a few less buttons done (a change she much appreciated). The harsh lines had faded from his face and the dark circles were gone from his eyes. Instead, his eyes blazed brighter. He smiled easier, laughed freely. And he'd acquired a sort of quietness and calm, too.

It was a wondrous thing to behold.

But what Sara didn't know, didn't realize, was she was doing the same.


End file.
